#15 Still More Non-fiction

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family is the memoir of Patricia Volk whose family owned Morgens in NYC. I suppose it's a happy family because in a lot of ways it was like mine (If all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways, we must be happy ones, right?) except Volk's family made the papers in New York City more often than mine did in small town New Hampshire. Her family members: introduced pastrami to America, invented the multicolored retractable pen, won best legs in Atlantic City, and one was held hostage for seven hours by a burgular. I'm not going to hold my family up to such scrutiny.

Each chapteris named for a food Volk associates with the person or people featured int he chapter. So Uncle Bob is profiled in "Mallomars" (my uncle Bob would be in the "weed" chapter) and her sister is in "Scrambled Eggs" (my sister might be Circus Peanuts). Each family member's story--which is told with a great deal of kindness--has a moral tale, which, according to Telling True Stories, is desirable. Several people stand out in my mind. Aunt Lil has two embroidered pillows on her couch: "Hope for the best. Expect the worst." and "I've never forgotten a rotten thing that anyone's ever done to me." Wow. (There's more needlework too: her family's housekeeper is a quilter.) Aunt Ruthie (who survived being held hostage) is the master of the biting zinger, one of those offhanded little remarks that can cut to the quick. I had planned to read it at Sunday dinner because it's my grandmother all over. But last night I read it to my sister, and she wants to borrow the book. When I read a little bit of the criticism the mother makes, she wanted me to send the book to our mother. I have a feeling this, like Marley and Me, is going to be a book that makes the rounds in my family.

I skipped another book I've read because I want to think about it more before I write about it.

Non-fiction: 8.5