What makes this book so engaging is that each braid is interesting all by itself. The third story has to be all about the food… stories about food, stories about relationships connected to food, and the recipes themselves. The second story is the back story of Fechtor’s life, mainly, her life as a graduate student, how she met her future husband, Eli, and their life together. The first braid is the story of the ruptured aneurysm. I could probably describe this book as a braided essay and easily get away with it. It was Fechtor’s connection to food – and the relationships that food create, if we allow – that brought her back to herself through a serious, arduous ordeal. Foods that reminded me who I was when I felt least like myself (Loc 68). The recipes in this book are for foods that connect me to myself and to my people. Because to follow the story where it went I had to follow it into my kitchen. It isn’t a cookbook, though there are recipes here. But the story is so engaging, the food has such a life of its own, and Fechtor’s story so real and captivating that I could barely put the book down to do my own writing.īy why food? How does a story about dealing with a brain aneurysm have anything to do with food? That’s a good questions, one that I definitely needed an answer to as I decided to invest my time in this book: I have to admit that I wasn’t super excited to read a book about food and someone’s “broken brain,” as Fechtor puts it. But it wasn’t obvious to me then that a start had occurred at all (Loc 61). I start this story here, on the floor of a conference center gym, because it now seems the most obvious place. It is also the story of a new start, one through which Fechtor realizes, more clearly than she ever has before, how her true self is part of the recipes she has taken and made her own over the years. She does this be weaving together the story of her conscious work at re-membering who she was – is – in relation to food – in relation to sharing food with her family and friends. Fechtor’s goal in writing this book is, I believe, to find her way back to herself – the self that she was before she lost the ability to be whole amidst the connections she has learned from cooking, baking, and feeding those she cares about. The rest of the story is a truly engaging take on a very long road to recovery, alongside a mixture of Fechtor’s life and her relationship with food. Jessica Fechtor begins her book at the point when she has just had a ruptured aneurysm: She went from running on a treadmill in a gym with her friends Or and Ilana to laying on the floor, thinking she’s sick from a migraine. Penguin Group Avery 288 pages NetGAlley ARC – Released June 23, 2015

Stir by Jessica Fechtor