My review of Ina Garten's memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens

Ina Garten titled her memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens. In my view, a better title would be her husband Jeffrey’s advice: “Do what you love. If you love it, you’ll be really good at it.” To become the Food Network star and cookbook diva she is, plucky Ina overcame many obstacles. Yes, she had a few lucky breaks. But passion for her vision drives her drive, an off-the-charts work ethic. She truly loves bringing people together around good food. Fans respond to that love.

 

Highlights of Ina’s story take the reader from her 1950s childhood to present day. Readers who also passed their youth in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s will resonate with events and views from those decades. One aspect of those times faced by Jeffrey and Ina was the changing roles of men and women in the home. Their marriage challenges as they each pursue their own passions play key roles in this memoir. Their mutual proactive support is inspiring. And interesting! And creative!

 

Creativity abounds in this memoir—in cooking, in building a business, in trail blazing nontraditional ways, in negotiating real estate deals, in designing and decorating to meet needs, in creating a legacy of bringing people together around good food. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Be Ready When the Luck Happens. Just when Ina’s celebrity name dropping would lull me into thinking she was leading a charmed life, another professional or personal mountain would loom. She’d climb it, only to reach a cliff. As she leapt off, she’d creatively stitch her own parachute!

 

Ina includes a few recipes in the book, and I found them inspiring as well. Also inspiring is how despite emotional pain inflicted by her parents, she repeatedly follows her father’s negotiating advice to her great benefit. One head-scratcher for me was how someone with a family background of harsh criticism emerged into adulthood with such bold self-confidence. This memoir doesn’t adequately answer that question, unless it’s Ina’s last line: “We all need only one person to believe in us, and for me, that person is Jeffrey. With his love and support, I learned to believe in myself and found happiness and peace.” 

 

Since Ina Garten’s success seemed, to me anyway, to be a product of her passion and hard work, perhaps the “luck” she refers to was meeting Jeffrey.

 

My review of The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

On one level, the plot of The Shadow of the Wind is simple: Young Daniel Sempere falls in love with a novel and decides to find out where its author has disappeared to. But as Daniel’s search unfolds, the story develops complex layers. The twists and turns in the plot of Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s novel The Shadow of the Wind took me on a corkscrew roller coaster ride. 

 

Set in Barcelona from 1945 to 1966, The Shadow of the Wind, which is also the name of the elusive author’s novel that so fascinated Daniel, contains murder, madness, incendiary hatred, passionate love, cruelty, curiosity, bravery, cowardice, and one silver-tongued, quick-thinking master of repartée, Daniel’s unlikely accomplice.

 

One frustration I had reading this novel was that despite the emotionally charged happenings, the fast pace of Daniel’s quest prevented me from experiencing emotion. I just wanted to pursue the mystery. Another frustration was that the length of various witnesses’ testimonies slowed my pursuit of the mystery. Then of course, the reader has to wait while Daniel and his accomplice figure out which parts of whose stories are false. In short, the pacing jerked me around a bit. That said, The Shadow of the Wind is a wild and engrossing mystery novel.

 

Consider This a Kiss

Consider This a Kiss

by Jane Hoppe

            “Are you the lady who’s a writer?” the cabbie asked. “I picked up a lady with your last name from this apartment building about two years ago. I think she said she wrote books. I like to write, too, so we had a nice conversation about writing.”

 

            Two years ago, before I abandoned my book, I would have publicly called myself a writer. But I blanked on this cabbie connection. Embarrassment about not remembering him and reawakened discouragement about my writing paralyzed my tongue. The publisher’s rejection letter in my dusty manuscript file flashed behind my closed eyes. I dared not expose my pen’s two-year dry spell to the driver of Cab No. 217. I squeezed back tears. No longer willing to say out loud that I am a writer, I could not enter into his unspoiled enthusiasm for our shared passion.

 

            He filled the silence. “I have so many ideas for books … so many ideas, but I don’t write them down. It’s frustrating!”

 

            “I’ve heard writers say that what you’re experiencing is common among all writers. Do you prefer writing fiction or nonfiction?” I inquired.

 

“Fiction. Once when I was driving over a bridge, the rumbling of my tires got my imagination going so strong, I didn’t even hear the dispatcher calling me.”

 

Just as my preference for nonfiction was about to slip off my tongue, I remembered my charade and kept silent. To lower the risk that he’d resurrect the subject of my writing, I asked some polite questions about word processing software, and then, “What experiences driving a cab do you want to write about?” I studied the wide bow of his horn-rimmed glasses pressing into his graying right temple, and I returned his rearview-mirror eye contact as he talked the whole rest of the way to the airport. I scooched forward to hear the stories he wanted to include in his book, if only he would write them down.

 

He had picked up a Chinese lady in her forties and her elderly mother. As they spoke with each other in No. 217’s backseat, he began to hear a different sound, like tiny laughter, which he soon realized was actually the old woman softly crying.

 

He lobbed a cautious, “Everything okay?” into the backseat.

 

“My husband. He stole my teeth,” the elder lady replied in a wavering voice. No. 217 was just thinking stolen teeth would make a funny story when she added, “He hide denture so I not eat. He angry rit me. Punish me.” Shame almost swallowed her voice. In the rearview mirror, No. 217 glimpsed the wiry white head disappearing into her daughter’s shoulder. He refrained from asking how long this horrible cruelty had gone on. I wondered if he would weep when he eventually put this story on paper.

 

Then there was the business-suited drunk girl deposited in his backseat by a concerned bartender. “Get on 53,” she slurred. No. 217 did. “No, now go back the other way.” He turned the cab around. “I want to go into Chicago.” He headed toward the city. She had refused to tell him where she lived. Then she passed out. This couldn’t go on. Yet he dared not touch her to shake her awake or even lift her head to receive some coffee. So he stopped the taxi, turned to her, and spoke sternly, “If you don’t tell me where you live, I’m going to take you directly to the police station.” With this, the young woman stirred, propping herself up on one elbow.

 

“Derek, that’s my boyfriend—well, former boyfriend—bought me a couple margaritas. Then he went to the washroom. Twenty minutes of waiting and I went to look for him.”

 

“Did you find him?” queried the cabbie.

 

“Oh yeah, I found him all right. I found him in the corner booth schmoozin’ his lips off with the floozy entertainment.”

 

“Ouch.”

 

“He traded me in for a go-go dancer,” she choked, “me, with a marketing degree and at only twenty-five, my own advertising business—me, who loved him.”

 

No. 217 was quiet.

 

“How could he do this to me? I turned away from him so fast and hid in a crowd of friends in another booth, and well, I guess I ordered one too many martinis after that. Who called you, anyway?”

 

“The bartender. Listen, I am going to give you some advice. You would be better off worrying about your advertising business than worrying about this guy.”

 

She gave No. 217 her address. She paid him. But before she stepped out of the cab, she reached forward and with two fingers on his chin, pulled his cheek toward her and kissed him. With a gentle brush of his own fingers on that cheek, he shyly showed me the exact spot.

 

“What’s that for?” he asked her.

 

“Thank you for telling me the truth.”

 

If not with a kiss, then with words, I wish I had thanked No. 217 for showing me the truth. And I wish I had at least admitted my discouragement to him. My conversation with this compassionate cabbie showed me I can’t write and hide at the same time. I did write down this story before I forgot it, and that’s a start. Other real-life stories are waiting to be told.