Taste: my life through food by Stanley Tucci
[NC]: Penguin Books, 2022 (first published 2021) ISBN 9780241501009
I haven't seen too many Stanley Tucci films, apart from The Devil wears Prada which is one of my wife's favourite films. So, he wasn't really on my radar, until I caught his television series Searching for Italy, which I loved not only for the food, but for Tucci's undeniable style and wickedly dry sense of humour.
So, this Christmas, my wife bought me this book. I'm very pleased to state it's all I hoped it would be - witty, urbane, chic in an understated way, and of course a paean to Stanley's life-long enjoyment of food. Every now and then one reads a book and when you realise you are coming to the end you slow down, to delay the inevitable disappointment of finishing. This is one of those books.
The book is a memoir told through food. It is a love letter to his parents, particularly his mother. And it is a description of all the glorious (and not so glorious) food that he has eaten in his life. Tucci's grandparents were Calabrian immigrants to the USA, and so the food he ate in his younger years was Italian, and it is that food - basic and hearty Italian cuisine, that forms the basis of this book.
The book is structured around moments in Tucci's life, where he describes his childhood, or a moment of filming, or his life in New York or London, spiralling in to food, and often providing a recipe so that the reader can make and enjoy the dish he is writing about. He talks about restaurants long gone (and recently gone - it's sad how many restaurants shut their doors due to the COVID epidemic), and current, as well as the great family feasts and all the joy and argument that comes with them (it is an Italian family after all).
His vignettes of the film world are fascinating and amusing, particularly his rendition of a dinner with Marcello Mastroianni, about which he writes "...even the birth of my children has not given me the joy I felt from that invitation." It is this sort of humour that pervades the book and which makes it a joy to read. There are quite a few laugh out loud moments too.
Tucci doesn't shy away from the tough times in his life. His first wife died from cancer, and the trauma of that is obvious in the book, as was the fear when he himself was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth a few years ago - the last part of the book describes how he lost the ability to eat, to taste and to enjoy food - which made him realise just how much food and all it entails means to him. His description of his slow climb back to eating is uplifting, and a fitting end to a wonderful tale.
Highly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment