Strong Roots

 

Strong Roots: a memoir of food, family & Ukraine / Olia Hercules
NY: Knopf, c2025.
288 p.

I devoured this memoir of food, family and Ukraine. Olia Hercules is a well known Ukrainian cook based in the UK. When the invasion happened in 2022, she took part in many fundraising activities, encouraging restaurants and foodies in UK to create events and raise money. 

In this book, she shares what happened in the aftermath of the invasion to her personally and to her parents as they fled Kherson, near Crimea. And she takes that beginning and moves back into three generations of her family, their lives, experiences, values. As she notes in her acknowledgements, "Not one generation of my family has escaped dispossession, deportation or war."

This is a beautifully written family history, full of longing for Ukraine, with evocative recollections of natural beauty, food and family, and alongside that, the realities of war over a century, deportations, violence - and the way those things were not often discussed openly. She covers many years of Soviet rule, and the breakup of the regime, from her parents' experiences to her own. Her writing is so powerful I feel like I can see the places she describes for myself. She has a talent for metaphor and imagery, for tucking dark facts into lovely settings.

This is not a foodie memoir but food plays a role. Places are described using food based metaphors -- and she talks about family dinners, family recipes, about making food for her parents as they first arrive in Italy from Ukraine in 2022 -- using whatever she could find in Italy for borsch, and making bread: "Kneading dough is a sensory repetition that forces you to observe the moment, to let go of the insistent buzz of anxiety."

This is a five star read for me. The combination of history, food, family stories with the fluid writing style that makes you feel that Hercules is talking to you directly, all make this a fantastic book. I can't recommend it enough. Anyone wanting to know more about Ukraine needs to read this gorgeous story.

And if you love food too, even better. Make sure you check out Olia Hercules' cookbooks, especially Summer Kitchens, my favourite. 

Food Was Her Country

Food Was Her Country / Marusya Bociurkiw
Qualicum Beach, BC: Caitlin Press, c2018.
176 p.

I read Bociurkiw's first memoir, Comfort Food for Breakups, a decade ago, and have intended to read this one ever since! But I think I read it at the right time, as I found this so powerful and engrossing when I picked it up a few weeks ago. 

Her essay in Unbound, which I recently reviewed, has a lot of crossover with this book -- some of the same material. If I hadn't read them coincidentally at the same time, I might not have realized! But it's wonderful writing so I didn't mind at all. 

Her writing is smooth and engaging, even as she talks about parents aging, family estrangement, issues of identity and sexuality, and difficult memories. She also talks about building new relationships both with her family and with chosen family, lots about food of course (she is an amazing food writer), and lots of fascinating background on being Ukrainian Canadian. She grew up in Western Canada but has lived in Toronto for a long time, so there is also that element that shapes her relationships.

There is a lot to take in here. There are many life events she shares, often using food as a connecting link. The main thread in this memoir is her relationship with her mother, and her mother's past -- both as a Ukrainian and as her specific role in their family. She and her mother communicate with food, and the writing here does not strain the metaphor at all, but makes it so beautiful. Bociurkiw's voice is gentle, honest, and grounded. You can tell she knows herself and is centred, even while ranging over her past.  

If you are interested in thoughtful, poetic examinations of family, or food, or the second or third generation immigrant experience, you will also love this. I was very taken with this one and would reread it in a flash. Very impressive style and substance, too. 

I Hate Borsch!

 

I Hate Borsch! / Yevgenia Nayberg
Grand Rapids, Michigan : Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2022.
56 p.

This deceptively simple picture book is a great read. It's not much of a narrative arc -- the main character hates borsch as a child. From the beets to the slimy tomatoes, it's all an ICK from her. None of the babas anywhere in Kyiv can convince her it's good. 

But then she immigrates to the US and finds that she misses borsch and all it means to her. And she comes to like it after all, as do her own children later on. 

There are really lovely illustrations in this book, fun and quirky. (the author both wrote and illustrated the book). I felt quite connected to this little story, as when I was a child I also hated Borsch! I didn't like beets at all. Now of course, there's nothing better :) She includes a recipe for quick borsch at the end, and also says not to tell her that it's not the way YOUR grannie made it...there are hundreds of different ways to make borsch, depending on who's doing it. I found that quite funny.

The book is quite sweet but there is also more to it than just talking about food. It's about food as a cultural identifier, about the connection to the past and to the larger cultural identity. It's only when she's left Ukraine that she realizes how much it means and why their family would make and eat it so often. There's room for discussion with children after reading this quiet little book together, and it made this adult reader thoughtful as well as amused. A great mix. 

The Reading Cure by Laura Freeman

 

The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite / Laura Freeman
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, c2018.
260 p.

I recently gave a class on Bibliotherapy for my library, and in my research I came across this book. It looked so good, I immediately requested it via Interlibrary Loan. I've just finished reading it, and I wholeheartedly recommend it as an excellent bookish memoir, but more, as a story of how literature helped the author (and still does) through her experience of anorexia starting at age 13. 

Freeman is a fantastic writer. Her evocation of her life experience and how and why reading came to be a salve to her is so honestly and harrowingly done. She's clear about the terrible affliction of anorexia, and how it is a mind disorder that she still has to fight with -- and she also powerfully engages with classic British literature to find her appetite again. She's a British writer, and one educated traditionally, so the books she reads are older and canon, for the most part. But she can make Dickens sound so exotic and colourful, and Virginia Woolf so terribly fragile and yet strong. She recoils from the vulgar appetites and indulgences of books like Gargantua & Pantagruel, but is encouraged by the homely love of boiled eggs and tea in Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man. 

It's not that she read a book and then rushed to recreate meals and suddenly eat with no issues, it's that the books showed her that enjoying food, anticipating meals, eating communally, can be a reasonable and healthy appetite to have. That food often meant comfort and community, and that it was alright to want to eat. 

Books also gave her sustenance in other ways: her habit of extreme walks was reflected in Virginia Woolf and in Dickens, but for both of them, a walk was preceded or concluded by a hot bit of food -- so she realized it was best to walk when fortified. And in one of the most moving parts, for me, she reads T.H. White's The Once & Future King, & finds her key to surviving the vicissitudes of her condition.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world works and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

I imagine this works for a certain kind of bookish person, of whom the author is one. It resonates with me as well. 

If you love reading about the deep experience of books and reading in another's life, and want to engage with a writer examining English novels, memoirs, children's books, food writers and more, this is a wonderful choice. Beautifully written, full of passion for the enchantment of books, and for life, I highly recommend it.