Insatiable

April 3, 2006
Greene almost turned down New York magazine's request to be its weekly food critic in 1968, but decided that free meals at the city's top restaurants would be wonderful. Turns out it was. She has reviewed and reveled in the city's eateries, offering her often spicy commentary on the best and worst of them. As her spicy life shares the spotlight with the food, listeners can savor good food and good sex, foreplay and fork-play in her remembrances of what she's done (and eaten) with whom. Nancy Travis's reading is a nice concoction of humor, sarcasm, pathos, New York edge and French pronunciation. Greene herself speaks at beginning and end, providing listeners with a lovely appetizer and dessert. There's much to learn about food, food writers, restaurateurs, sex and New York City's love affair with all of it through the last nearly 40 years.

April 15, 2006
"New York" magazine contributing editor and former restaurant critic Greene ("Blue Skies, No Candy") serves up a feast in this memoir chronicling her involvement in the history of both the culinary and the sexual revolutions in the United States. A self-proclaimed sensualist, she artfully blends food and sex, liberally spicing talk of restaurants that changed the way Americans ate, chefs who elevated cooking to an art form or launched culinary movements, and food celebrities such as Julia Child and Craig Claiborne with tales of her bedroom encounters. Chapters with titles like -A Peanut Butter Kid in a Velveeta Wasteland - and -Splendor in the Fois Gras - whet the appetite and contain recipes (e.g., Almost Like Mom's Macaroni and Cheese, Infidelity Soup) that capture a memory or reflect a particular decade. Greene's focus is mainly New York restaurants, and that, together with her prose, might be an acquired taste, but the book is still an engaging account of the food world. Recommended for public and academic libraries." -Christine Holmes, San Jose State Univ. Lib., CA"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2006
In this freewheelingly sensuous autobiography, restaurant critic and novelist Greene casts the path of her life as an education of her appetites. Born into an unexceptional postwar midwestern home, Greene knew little about taste. Her hunger for good food led her from a successful career as a magazine writer to a coveted position as one of Manhattan's most respected restaurant critics. Simultaneous development into womanhood followed a no-less-stellar trajectory. Her male conquests, begun in earnest when she gained access in Detroit to a visiting Elvis Presley's hotel suite, continue through a host of celebrities and a remarkable doomed marriage. Her culinary appetite takes her to France and a vision of perfection at Fernand Point's temple of French gastronomy. Greene had the great good fortune to become a food critic just as American culture was awakening to a newfound infatuation with all tastes French, Italian, and Chinese, just as the same culture liberated women to revel in other appetites their bodies might hunger after. Greene joyfully and unabashedly celebrates both food and sex, having her own way with both. Recipes (for food) included.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)