Not Becoming My Mother - Ruth Reichl

Not Becoming My Mother - Ruth Reichl (2009)

I must have read something to recommend this book in the depths of blogland, and thought I would give it a go.  When I got it out from the local library, the librarian said that she had read her earlier books and was a good author, always a good start.

So this little tome didn't take long to read, it is a short little 112 pages.  She is primarily a food writer/critic/editor, but in this book she talks about her relationship with her mother.  I always enjoy tales of growing up, and I think the memoir succeeds because Ruth Reichl ends up understanding, that although her mother was full of faults and quite unstable, she was a product of her times.  On what would have been her mothers hundreth birthday Ruth opens her mothers old diaries and letters and learns about the mother she never knew.

My mother has been gone six years now, and there is so much I wish I could ask her, the things that no one else knows the answers to.  So a 3/5 - for making me think about my own mum, and wish that she had left a pile of letters behind.