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Title: What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories
Author: Laura Shapiro
Narrator: Kimberly Farr, Laura Shapiro
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
Language: English
Release date: 01-25-18
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs
Publisher's Summary:
Dorothy Wordsworth believed that feeding her poet brother, William, gooseberry tarts was her part to play in a literary movement.
Cockney chef Rosa Lewis became a favourite of King Edward VII, who loved her signature dish of whole truffles boiled in champagne.
Eleanor Roosevelt dished up Eggs Mexican - a concoction of rice, fried eggs, and bananas - in the White House.
Eva Braun treated herself to champagne and cake in the bunker before killing herself, alongside Adolf Hitler.
Barbara Pym's novels overflow with enjoyment of everyday meals - of frozen fish fingers and Chablis - in midcentury England.
Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown's idea of 'having it all' meant having almost nothing on the plate except a supersized portion of diet gelatin.
In the irresistible What She Ate, Laura Shapiro examines the plates, recipe books and shopping trolleys of these six extraordinary women, casting a new light on each of their lives - revealing love and rage, desire and denial, need and pleasure.
Critic Reviews:
"In this joyful examination of six women's lives in food, Shapiro sets out to excavate the minutiae of domestic routines for insights into the connection between mental state and menu...Always entertaining and brimming with enticing small details, from an image of Roosevelt scrambling eggs at the table in a dinner-party performance piece, to Pym noticing that Philip Larkin refused Brie at lunch." (Francesca Wade, Financial Times)
"If you find the subject of food to be both vexing and transfixing, you'll love What She Ate." (Elle)
"I devoured the book in one sitting." (Washington Post)
Members Reviews:
Food as Comfort, Social Status, or a Weapon
Laura Shapiro looks at six women and how what they ate, or didnât eat, shaped their lives and the lives of those around them. She begins with Dorothy Wordsworth. While she was the caretaker and companion of her brother, her meals were nutritious. When she slid in to dementia after having been displaced by his wife as the main female in Wordsworthâs life, she ate constantly.
Rosa Lewis rose from being a servant to becoming the foremost chef of her age. Her ticket to high society was food. Eva Braun, was more into champagne than nutritious food. Although Hitler was a vegetarian, he binged on champagne and sugar.
Eleanor Roosevelt used food as a weapon. Angered by her husbandâs affair with Lucy Mercer, she served some of the worst meals ever encountered in the White House. Barbara Pymâs novels are filled with the type of food nice English ladies served to their clerics. People may think the food was bland, but Pym presents it as a good background to the society of the day.
Helen Gurley brown appreciated food, only as it related to the man in her life. I suspect that could be said for the other women, but Brown indulged her man while being practically anorexic herself.
This is a fascinating book. I hadnât realized how much we can learn about people, not only women, from how they approach food. The book doesnât psychoanalyze these women, but some themes are evident such as Eleanor Roosevelt using food as pay back.