Not Becoming My Mother
By Ruth Reichl
Allen & Unwin, $32.99
Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

This is US food writer Ruth Reichl’s fourth memoir, and it’s both her slimmest volume and most thoughtful writing to date.
In previous books this born storyteller has entertained with tales of her years as a restaurant critic when she famously dressed up in disguises to fool staff at top restaurants.
The person who tends not to come out well from these memoirs is her larger-than-life mother Miriam. Reichl (pic right) has enjoyed playing it for laughs with accounts of her mother’s dangerously idiosyncratic approach to food, the mould scooped off dishes before they were served, the mismatched ingredients – marshmallow fluff and herring hors d’oeuvres anyone? - and the poisoned dinner guests.
In some ways this new memoir is Reichl’s apology to Miriam, a belated attempt to honour her mother and discover why she became the woman she was.
On what would have been her mother’s one hundredth birthday, Reichl plucked up the courage to open up a box full of her old letters and notes and finally got to know her properly.
She writes of how the young Miriam yearned to become a doctor but was crushed by her parents who told her: “You’re no beauty, and it’s too bad you’re such an intellectual. But if you become a doctor no man will ever marry you.”
Instead Miriam opened a bookshop and found she loved it. But marriage and motherhood meant the end of that career and, although she had everything she was supposed to want, the notes she jotted on scraps of paper make it clear she was “tempestuously unhappy”.
Soon it became more serious and Miriam was mentally ill, medicated into acceptability by a succession of doctors.
“The more I came to know this woman, the more grateful I became that I did not have to live her life,” writes Reichl.
What is so moving about this book is Reichl’s growing realisation of the sacrifices her mother made for her. Miriam hated the idea of her daughter following in her footsteps. She wanted her to have a career, choices, freedom, and most importantly to listen to her own feelings rather than do the things expected of her.
Not Becoming My Mother may not be as amusing or gossipy as Reichl’s earlier work but this is an intimate, honest and elegantly written mother/daughter story and a thoroughly worthwhile read.
Footnote:
Nicky Pellegrino is the books editor at the Herald on Sunday where this review was first published (31 May, 2009). She is also a highly regarded NZ-based novelist whose latest title, The Italian Wedding, (Orion), was recently published in NZ, Australia and the UK .