Bonny knew her father was a Holocaust survivor, and she knew he wanted her to write his story one day, but she couldn’t quite look that much pain and tragedy in the eye and get to writing. This book is her story, a woman who grew up under the shadow of her father’s experiences, but also in the light of his deep love of life and family. It’s also the story of her finding her voice and her own creative path, as a writer and as a chef.

The title of the book comes from the moment when two starving Jewish boys were given one egg to share between them, one of those boys was her father, and later moments of shared meals with family, where there was always enough to go around.

Bonny Reichert is a Canadian journalist, editor and creative writing teacher, who also trained to be a chef. Her love of food and her knowledge about it deeply inform this book. Many of the chapters titles are ingredients or delicious dishes, and she also makes the point that food is culture and the tie that binds us together. Her father was a restaurateur, her beloved grandmother taught her how to cook, her mother refused to serve the cheaper cuts of meat of her own childhood, and by making dishes his mother used to make, the author helps unlock her fathers own childhood memories.

As you’d expect from a writing teacher and a journalist, the author can write. This memoir is a very flowing read, and she comes across as very likable and relatable, as she tells the story of her own coming of age, and into adulthood. It’s a slightly odd read in a way, because it’s not clear which story is uppermost, which means all the threads suffer a little bit. The father’s story of surviving the holocaust casts a shadow over life of the author, but the book is not his story, so we either want more of that, or for the author to step forward more. She is somewhat reticent about her own life. We barely meet her first husband before he’s gone. She has three sisters, but they’re barely part of her life, seemingly. The same for her children. She seems to not have many friends, and even says at one point that she dropped them as soon as she got into a serious relationship. I get the impression she wanted to protect these people from the spotlight a little, which is understandable, but as a reader, it feels like her life is just her and her father. Then we have her story of finding her creativity and selfhood through creating meals and working with food. These parts shine, but again, this could have been the main thread of the book, but it’s not fully foregrounded. I was left feeling a little bit like I wasn’t sure what the author was trying to say with this book, but that said, I did enjoy the journey and spending time reading this one, and I would read more by the author.

What did strike me when reading this was the impact of her father’s experiences on this daughter. Bonny is the last of four daughters, and we never know what impact it had on the elder children in the family, if they felt something similar or different, but we do learn how it impacted Reichert. She loves her father, and it seems like she may have been his favourite daughter, though that may just be the impression I got. He calls her his miracle child. That love becomes in some ways a burden, a weight, it seems. He had been through a terrible experience, so he wanted her to only ever be happy, rejecting her other emotions, even while trying to protect her. Bonny also talks about how she had to protect him, almost splitting her personality in two to keep him safe from the parts of her he couldn’t handle. It’s hard on a child to protect a parent, and can be a reversal of roles. She also talks about how she had a strong, visceral reaction to holocaust stories and imagery, because her beloved father had lived through that. She would often have recurring nightmares and nausea, but felt like she had to listen to be there for her father. I felt so bad for her and so much compassion at these times in her story. Our parents are so precious to us, but as children, the thought of something bad happening to them is gut wrenching and terrifying. It was a part of the legacy of the survivors that I hadn’t heard before. She also makes the point that when your parent has survived something like Auschwitz, your normal childhood feelings or life problems feel petty and irrelevant. I think this is some of the most interesting parts of the story, the way that these big world events don’t just go away, they continue to impact into future generations in concrete and unpredictable ways. And perhaps in ways unique to the Holocaust survivor specifically.

It’s not a hard read, it has dark moments but Reichert writes in a light way, drawing you along through her life. I liked her finding her way, glad that she found greater boundaries and her own creativity, and I learned something while reading it. It could have been a little more defined, I think, but I will be looking for more from this author.

Read It If: you’re interested in Canadian voices, culinary memoires or stories of generational trauma.

Thank you to Penguin Random House and Appetite Random House for the copy of this book for review.