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In his 2009 memoir, "Born Round," writer Frank Bruni mines the irony of his 2004 appointment as the New York Times's restaurant critic. After all, he was a closet eater, who had grown up in a family of compulsive overeaters. He spent his youth and adulthood battling the obsession. Then a plum job with the Times is served up, and it requires him to eat.
Though Bruni recounts his humorous adventures as a restaurant critic in "Born Round," including trying to keep his reservation pseudonyms straight, it is also a poignant chronicle of his life-long struggle with food and weight issues. Bruni calls its focus his "eccentric and sometimes difficult relationship with food, from my childhood through my five and a half years as the restaurant critic of the New York Times."
On his website, he describes it as about " eating--publicly, privately, as a job, as a compulsion, with joy, with shame--and it's about the role that food plays in families, in romantic relationships and in a person's self-image." And lest you worry that it might be a little too heavy for you, it is seasoned throughout with dollops of humor. The Washington Post said, "Even the darkest periods are leavened by Bruni's black humor, which recalls that of Augusten Burroughs . . . or perhaps David Sedaris."
Coming up are two ways to get a taste of "Born Round": Bruni visits Westport Library to talk about it on August 2 at 7:30 p.m., and the paperback edition has just been released. His talk is free. For more information, visit the Westport Library's website. Enjoy!
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