Born round
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
The New York Times restaurant critic's heartbreaking and hilarious account of how he learned to love food just enough after decades of wrestling with his weightFrank Bruni was born round. Round as in stout, chubby, and hungry, always and endlessly hungry. He grew up in a big, loud Italian family in White Plains, New York, where meals were epic, outsize affairs. At those meals, he demonstrated one of his foremost qualifications for his future career: an epic, outsize appetite for food. But his relationship with eating was tricky, and his difficulties with managing it began early.When he was named the restaurant critic for the New York Times in 2004, he knew enough to be nervous. He would be performing one of the most closely watched tasks in the epicurean universe; a bumpy ride was inevitable, especially for someone whose writing beforehand had focused on politics, presidential campaigns, and the Pope.But as he tackled his new role as one of the most loved and hated...
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It is deeply uncomfortable to bear witness to someone else's untreated mental health disorder. The good(?) news is that Bruni acknowledges that he was bulimic during the period of his life that included bingeing and purging. The bad news is that Bruni does not acknowledge that he is equally unhealthy during the periods in which he matches binges with periods of extreme restriction, amphetamines and excessive exercise. His overvalued ideas about weight are similarly unquestioned, so there are literally hundreds of pages about how he can't date/be photographed/meet his friends, etc. because he's too fat. From the time he starts telling us he's fat (infancy, page 6) until about page 180, it's not even true – he's at most 5-10 pounds overweight on a 5'10” frame. It's clear by the time he actually gets fat that it's a self-inflicted condition from thirty years of yoyo dieting.
Things get better over two-thirds of the way through the book, when he actually becomes the NY times food editor (although the much ballyhooed association between that position and his weight loss is actually off by a couple of years) because his inside view on the food industry is fascinating. But that wasn't enough to save either the book, or really Bruni himself, who notes that he still binge eats occasionally (and here binge eating means literally that, not just an overindulgence), and in his mid-forties seems to have never had a serious romantic relationship or a strong commitment to anything beyond food and weight loss.
More books I only completed because I was stuck on an airplane – and for this one, I was out of all other books and my laptop was out of power, so really, what else can one do?
Bruni's writing style is really unique, especially for a food memoirist. Instead of recalling memories of food with nostalgia and happiness, they seem quite bittersweet—like good times mixed with an omen of what's to come. I took my time reading this book, not devouring it like I have with mystery novels lately. This book made me cackle and cry, and reminded me of my own bad habits with food and the irresistible nature of some foods.
