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.