A tale of life and love...triumph and tragedy...and simply learning to do the best with what we are given...all told through that medium that brings us all together...food! It's the one thing that everyone needs and most people enjoy. It is the universal similarity between everyone yet can just as easily start a war or bring it to an abrupt halt. The trials of which the author speaks that both she and her family (both extended and blood-relation) experienced will touch your heart, while the food that she recants the tale through will have your mouth watering for more.

Special note....beyond the enjoyable read for all, those working through or with someone that experiences clincal depression would be hard pressed to find another book of recent that shares its honest effects on not just the afflicted, but also those they hold dear. I would certainly think this may book may be a small way to uplift their spirits and see that their future is not has dark as they may imagine.
Happy reading! ( )

Keeping the Feast: One Couple’s Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy by Paula Butturini is just the sort of book I love…and just the sort of book I normally avoid. I love books about travel and Italy is high on my list of places that I absolutely must go. There’s a lot of food in this book and a great love for cooking and shared meals. However, I don’t have any personal experience with depression and memoirs about depression are not usually high on my list. Still, I was enchanted by this book. I devoured it (very appropriate) in one sitting on a short flight with a long delay. I have highlighted several recipes that I plan to try in my own kitchen. And I was very moved by John’s struggle with depression, by his wife’s unceasing love for him, and the support of their family and friends.

Paula and her husband, John, met in Rome. They were both foreign correspondents (she had recently moved to Rome and he was based in Bonn, Germany), and they fell in love with each other and the city:

“Can you love a city for its pink mornings and golden twilights? For the screech of its seagulls, the flitting of its swifts? Can you love a city because it is a riot of ochres and earth tomes, all of them drenched by a fierce, rich light? Can you feel sheltered by the earth-hugging chaos of a city’s skyline, exhilarated by its church domes floating like balloons across a deep blue sky?”

Apparently, the answer is yes.

Read my full review at Alive on the Shelves. ( )

Paula Butturini's "Keeping the Feast" is a hymn of praise to food. She vividly evokes the place food occupies in our lives by alternating memories of her childhood meals with stories of her adult life.
I read this, considering its suitability as a book for the class I teach on women's memoirs; this book will do marvelously. ( )

In my family, it's all about the food. We all cook and eat and talk about cooking and eating. It's a major pasttime. The family joke is that we're eating now and talking about what we'll eat next. The ritual of preparing and sharing meals knits us together in all kinds of ways.

Keeping the Feast is the story of Paula Butturini discovering how nourishing food really is during a time of trouble. It is a celebration of the small daily rituals that keep us going through the darkest times.

It is also a story about depression. There have been so many depression memoirs written over the past 20 years, most of them from the perspective of people who are or have suffered from this crippling, life-threatening illness. It's a little scary that there's a genre that I can easily label of memoirs about this, but also good that awareness and treatment options have grown over time. As someone who has suffered through bouts of depression off and on throughout my life it's been good to know that others have lived through it, too.

This book is something different within the confines of this genre. It is the story of what it is like to live with someone who is depressed, of how it feels to watch day after day as the person you love is replaced by a stranger. Ultimately Paula and John emerged on the other side, but Paula writes honestly and movingly about what that was like and what got her through.

I really enjoyed this book and found the author's stories and perspective moving and worthwhile. There were moments in this book that brought me to tears and moments of recognition and moments of utter envy (why don't I live in Italy?) and always the food ...

Thanks to the publisher for sending me an advance copy of this to review. ( )

Paula Butturini was a reporter working in Rome when she met and fell in love with another reporter, John Tagliabue. When John was offered a job in Poland, the couple decided he should accept the job, so they moved there. After two years, they made a quick visit back to Rome to get married.

Shortly after their marriage, Paula was severely beaten by police in Czechoslovakia and John almost died from a bullet wound he suffered in Romania. The couple’s life became mired in emotional and physical traumas after that – John battled hepatitis and drug-resistant clinical depression and Paula suffered the loss of loved ones.

Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini is a memoir that focuses on her life after meeting John, with flashbacks to previous times. Upon reflection, Paula comes to realize that the best times of her life are the times she shares food with loved ones – from her childhood dinners with extended family, to dinner with friends and meals shared with her own family. She celebrates that special time of our lives that we often overlook as being ordinary. Her descriptions of food are wonderful and she had me wishing I could go to Italy to experience their food.

This book isn’t all happiness, though. Paula and John survived some very difficult times that many other couple would not have. I admire her honesty and her commitment and determination to make her marriage work.

I enjoyed Keeping the Feast, but don’t think I loved it as much as everyone else has, and I’m not really sure why. The story and writing are good and kept me engaged until about three-fourths of the way through, when I was ready for things to be wrapped up. Overall, the book left me with a sad feeling, but I think the point was to inspire hope. I do think it’s a must read for anyone who suffers from clinical depression or has a family member or close friend who does. ( )