Tongue

Kyung-Ran Jo
Bloomsbury USA
Reviewed by Nancy
2 out of 5 stars

Summary

Emotionally raw and emphatically sensual, Tongue is the story of the demise of an obsessive romance and a woman's culinary journey toward self-restoration and revenge. When her boyfriend of seven years leaves her for another woman, the celebrated young chef Jung Ji-won shuts down the cooking school she ran from their home and sinks into deep depression, losing her will to cook, her desire to eat, and even her ability to taste. Returning to the kitchen of the Italian restaurant where her career first began, she slowly rebuilds her life, rediscovering her appreciation of food, both as nourishment and as sensual pleasure. She also starts to devise a plan for a final, vengeful act of culinary seduction.

Tongue is a voluptuous, intimate story of a gourmet relying on her food-centric worldview to emerge from heartbreak; a mesmerizing, delicately plotted novel at once shocking and profoundly familiar.

My Review

I really wanted to love this story. It’s a relatively short book at only 212 pages, but it wasn’t one of those books I could easily read in one or two sittings. There just wasn’t enough there to really draw me in and engage my emotions. A well-known young chef mourns the loss of her 7-year relationship. She loses her desire to cook, to eat, and even her sense of taste. Gradually, she starts to put her life back together and returns to the Italian restaurant where she started her career. This is more difficult than it sounds, as she is still obsessed with her ex-boyfriend and is unable to completely let him go.

It's well-written, but the passion and intensity was missing for me. I expect a book that explores the life of a woman grieving a failed relationship and where food is such a significant part of the story to overwhelm my emotions and senses. The main and secondary characters are very distant. The food is well described, but I couldn't taste or smell it. The boyfriend is hardly described at all. What little I knew of him, I didn’t like and couldn’t understand why the chef was so obsessed with him. Even the conclusion failed to disturb or elicit much emotion.

Still, it's rather unusual and I'm not sorry I read it.

Drinking Boston: A History of the City and Its Spirits

Stephanie Schorow
Union Park Press
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

From the revolutionary camaraderie of the Colonial taverns to the saloons of the turn of the century; from a Prohibition period rife with class politics, social reform, and opportunism to a trail of nightclub neon so vast, it was called the Conga Belt, Drinking Boston is a tribute to the fascinating role alcohol has played throughout the city's history. Teasing out this curious relationship in particular, the clash between a constrained Puritanism (lingering like a hangover today) and a raucous revolutionary spirit, Drinking Boston introduces the cast of characters who championed or vilified drinking and the places where they imbibed legally and otherwise. Visiting some of Boston's most storied neighborhood bars, this pub crawl ends with Boston's distinct recipe for the current cocktail renaissance sweeping the nation. Stephanie Schorow serves up a remarkable cocktail representative of Boston's intoxicating story: its spirit of invention, its hardscrabble politics, its mythology, and the city's never-ending battle between personal freedom and civic reform.

My Review

Since Boston has the dubious honor of coming in first place on the Daily Beast's 25 Drunken Cities list for two years in a row and I regularly enjoy the pleasure of working, eating, and drinking there, I knew this book would be right up my alley.

This is a very well laid out chronology of Boston’s drinking history starting with the city’s revolutionary past and Prohibition and continuing with a detailed exploration of the city’s changing landscape, the public’s drinking tastes and habits, and an interest in classic drinks while inventing new creations using a variety of ingredients not available in years past. It covers saloons, taverns, nightclubs, jazz bars, gay bars, dive bars, and today’s neighborhood eateries that serve craft cocktails.

The mention of Cocoanut Grove’s tragic fire in 1942 that killed 492 people makes me want to visit its former location and explore the subject further, since it is a part of the city’s history I wasn’t aware of.

One of Boston’s oldest surviving bars is Jacob Wirth’s. I enjoyed reading about how it survived Prohibition by serving “near beer” that had less than .5% alcohol and loved how customers celebrated Repeal at Jacob Wirth’s even though the establishment had not yet obtained a liquor license. 

Getting smashed at Jacob Wirth's (est. 1868)


It was also interesting reading about McGreevy’s (formerly called the Third Base Saloon), a long-standing sports bar and baseball museum that is now owned by the Dropkick Murphys. Even though I’m not into sports bars, I’m tempted to visit just for its history.

Reading about some of the bars that have come and gone made me a little nostalgic for the Rathskeller (known as The Rat), a punk club in Kenmore Square known for its music scene, sticky floors, and fights. I remember seeing The Neighborhoods there in the early 80’s.



Along with the history, there are lots of interesting black & white photos and illustrations. Each chapter concludes with a drink recipe.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable and comprehensive history that I was glad to find at the library.