I was provided A Place at the Table in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are 100% my own.
About the book:
A Place at the Table chronicles three richly nuanced characters whose lives intersect in a chic Manhattan café. With inspiration drawn from New York’s landmark Café Nicholson and rooted in author Susan Rebecca White’s love of the cuisine of the South, A Place at the Table offers a powerful testament to the unlikely journeys that ultimately guide us home.
While A Place at the Table is a work of fiction, White’s imagination was sparked by reading about Edna Lewis, the legendary African-American chef and author of the classic A Taste of Country Cooking. An avid cook herself, White was fascinated by the story of Lewis – who was the chef at Café Nicholson in the late 1940s and early 1950s – and Lewis’s friend and protégé in her later years, chef Scott Peacock.
Read about the life, times, and career of Edna Lewis in this 2006 New York Times obituary.
Spanning from a freed-slave settlement in 1920s North Carolina to Manhattan in the 1980s, A Place at the Table celebrates the healing power of food and the magic of New York City as three seekers come together, understanding that when you embrace the thing that makes you different, you become whole.
About the author:
"Born and raised in Atlanta, Susan Rebecca White earned a BA in English from Brown University, then moved to San Francisco, where she taught and waited tables for several years, before moving to Virginia to earn her MFA in creative writing from Hollins University. At Hollins, she was a teaching fellow and the recipient of the James Purdy prize for outstanding fiction.
Susan’s debut novel, Bound South, received wide critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the Townsend Prize. Bound South was followed by A Soft Place to Land, also critically acclaimed and a Target “Club Pick.” Susan’s third novel, A Place at the Table, is receiving early praise and is on the American Booksellers Association “Indie Next List” for June of 2013. The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) selected A Place at the Table as a 2013 Summer “Okra Pick.”
Susan has been invited to festivals and book events around the country and has been a speaker at numerous academic and cultural institutions, including SCAD Atlanta, the Carter Center, the Margaret Mitchell house, and Birmingham’s Hoover library. Susan appeared in the February 2011 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, in a photograph and accompanying essay celebrating women authors living in Atlanta. During the summer of 2011, Susan lived in Manhattan to gain on-the-ground knowledge of the city and research in greater depth the history of Café Nicholson, the real-life restaurant that inspired Café Andres in A Place at the Table.
Susan currently lives in Atlanta, where she teaches creative writing at Emory University. During the winter of 2011 she was the writer-in-residence at SCAD Atlanta. She is married to Sam Redburn Reid, also an Atlanta native, meaning she and Sam both grew up eating Varsity hamburgers and riding the pink pig at the Rich’s downtown."
My Review:
Being an aspiring published author, it is
hard for me to write a less than great book review, but I also believe in honesty. I had the absolute hardest time reading this book. I had the hardest time connecting with the readers because I just didn't feel a connection with them. As much as I hate to admit this, I really could care less for the writing style of this book as well. There has only been six books
{three in each trilogy} that I have absolutely loved being written in first person and the way it flowed. I really wish I could say the same for
A place at the table, but I just can't. I also felt like the book was a tad bit dramatic in a sense in some of the scenes, but again that could just be me. This isn't a normal read for me and I like stepping out of my every day normal genre of books and while I understand why she wrote the book and the stories that needed to be told, I feel like the stories could have been told a little different. Also, I read other reviews and while quite a few agreed with me, quite a few also thought this was an amazing book. So, I'll be honest - I believe you should read this book and decide for yourself whether you like it or not. One other thing I do want to mention, is obviously this book talks quite a bit about food and Susan even shared one of the
yummy sounding recipes from her book and I am definitely going to have to try it, because the way she always described the food was perfect!
No matter what, being a writer and putting yourself out there is hard and I still want to read another book by Susan just to see if I would like another one of hers. I fully believe that just because I don't like one book by one author doesn't mean I won't like another!
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