Tender at the Bone

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Tender at the Bone

Ruth Reichl

Biography & Memoir

Jul 31, 2018

Since Ruth Reichl would grow up to become a New York Times restaurant critic and the last editor of Gourmet magazine, we might assume she was nurtured in a family kitchen rich with culinary accomplishment. But nothing could be further from the truth. “I had three grandmothers and none of them could cook,” she writes. But if Reichl’s palate was acquired later rather than nurtured at home, her gifts as a storyteller were fostered from the start. “I learned early that the most important thing in life is a good story,” she says at the outset of Tender at the Bone, and she proceeds to serve up one after another. Rare among memoirists, Reichl paints her coming-of-age in its brightest, most forgiving colors; if she has chosen to idealize her education, it is not to escape it, but better to use it, both imaginatively and emotionally. Since that is the goal toward which all education strives—is, indeed, the true meaning of “growing up”—her book is as wise as it is nourishing, and heartwarming in every sense.

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