The Fixed Stars

The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg

Nonfiction - Memoir

2020 Dreamscape Media

Narrated by Erin Mallon

Finished on January 15, 2023

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

From a bestselling writer, an intense and moving memoir about changing identity, complex sexuality, and enduring family relationships.

At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but she felt that something inside her had changed irrevocably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we’d like to believe.

Like many of us, Wizenberg had long understood sexual orientation as a stable part of ourselves: we’re “born this way.” Suddenly she realized that her story was more complicated. Who was she, she wondered, if something at her very core could change so radically? The Fixed Stars is a taut, electrifying memoir exploring timely and timeless questions about desire, identity, and the limits and possibilities of family. In honest and searing prose, Wizenberg forges a new path: through the murk of separation and divorce, coming out to family and friends, learning to co-parent a young child, and realizing a new vision of love. The result is a frank and moving story about letting go of rigid definitions and ideals that no longer fit, and learning instead who we really are.

Unlike Molly Wizenberg's previous memoirs,  A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table and Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage (both of which I read in December 2021), The Fixed Stars is more about sexuality and identity rather than a foodie memoir filled with recipes and life as a restaurant entrepreneur. Wizenberg (whose books are articulate and highly readable) weaves her story with anecdotes from her earlier life as a wife and mother with that of her new family (also as a wife and a mother). The memoir is not simply a navel-gazing tell-all, but an honest and intimate examination of one woman's experience, interspersed with beautiful metaphors, quotes from poets & authors, and multiple references to studies on sexuality and gender. All of these not only add validity and truth to Wizenberg's experience, but also give voice to that of others in similar situations. 

So many of my favorite blogs are now defunct, including Molly's blog (Orangette), which has now been replaced with I've Got a Feeling (a Substack newsletter). I've recently subscribed and discovered that there's at least a year's worth of articles to peruse. I'm hoping that some will include recipes, which Orangette was so well known for.

I listened to the audio version of the book and Erin Mallon does an outstanding job narrating Wizenberg's story. Had I not known that Mallon was the reader, I would have bet the author was reading her own work; her honesty and emotions ring true.

Thank you Libro.fm for the complimentary copy.

“Wizenberg writes with a remarkable openness about being true to herself and to others, and gives those looking to understand the complicated issue of sexuality a compassionate example of the many forms that love takes. This honest and moving memoir will enlighten and educate those seeking to understand their true selves.” — Publishers Weekly

Delancey

 

Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage by Molly Wizenberg

Nonfiction - Memoir

2014 Simon & Schuster

Finished on December 17, 2021

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

In this funny, frank, tender memoir and New York Times bestseller, the author of A Homemade Life and the blog Orangette recounts how opening a restaurant sparked the first crisis of her young marriage.

When Molly Wizenberg married Brandon Pettit, he was a trained composer with a handful of offbeat interests: espresso machines, wooden boats, violin-building, and ice cream–making. So when Brandon decided to open a pizza restaurant, Molly was supportive—not because she wanted him to do it, but because the idea was so far-fetched that she didn’t think he would. Before she knew it, he’d signed a lease on a space. The restaurant, Delancey, was going to be a reality, and all of Molly’s assumptions about her marriage were about to change.

Together they built Delancey: gutting and renovating the space on a cobbled-together budget, developing a menu, hiring staff, and passing inspections. Delancey became a success, and Molly tried to convince herself that she was happy in their new life until—in the heat and pressure of the restaurant kitchen—she realized that she hadn’t been honest with herself or Brandon.

With evocative photos by Molly and twenty new recipes for the kind of simple, delicious food that chefs eat at home, Delancey is a moving and honest account of two young people learning to give in and let go in order to grow together.

After reading Molly Wizenberg's previous memoir, A Homemade Life (which I loved!), I was eager to continue reading about her life and was thrilled to see that my library had a copy of Delancey, which I promptly checked out. I enjoyed reading about the beginnings of Molly and Brandon's jump into life as restaurant owners, but I wasn't as enthralled as I was when I read A Homemade Life. I marked a few recipes, but not nearly as many as in her first book. Wizenberg's writing is still very engaging (and very honest about their struggles, both financial and emotionally) and she's a good storyteller, but the details of setting up the restaurant became a bit of a slog. Molly was not at all enthusiastic about Brandon's dream to open a restaurant and her negative outlook (which she kept mostly to herself) cast a shadow over the narrative as I continued to read. I'm not sorry that I read Delancey, but it wasn't as strong or as upbeat as A Homemade Life and I don't feel the need to rush out and buy a permanent copy for my shelves. I have her third memoir (The Fixed Stars) on audio and will begin that in 2022.

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table

 

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

Nonfiction 

2009 Simon & Schuster

Finished on November 16, 2021

Rating: 5/5 (Excellent)

Publisher's Blurb:

When Molly Wizenberg's father died of cancer, everyone told her to go easy on herself, to hold off on making any major decisions for a while. But when she tried going back to her apartment in Seattle and returning to graduate school, she knew it wasn't possible to resume life as though nothing had happened. So she went to Paris, a city that held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat. She was supposed to be doing research for her dissertation, but more often, she found herself peering through the windows of chocolate shops, trekking across town to try a new pâtisserie, or tasting cheeses at outdoor markets, until one evening when she sat in the Luxembourg Gardens reading cookbooks until it was too dark to see, she realized that her heart was not in her studies but in the kitchen.

At first, it wasn't clear where this epiphany might lead. Like her long letters home describing the details of every meal and market, Molly's blog Orangette started out merely as a pleasant pastime. But it wasn't long before her writing and recipes developed an international following. Every week, devoted readers logged on to find out what Molly was cooking, eating, reading, and thinking, and it seemed she had finally found her passion. But the story wasn't over: one reader in particular, a curly-haired, food-loving composer from New York, found himself enchanted by the redhead in Seattle, and their email correspondence blossomed into a long-distance romance.

In A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother's pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately entwined. You won't be able to decide whether to curl up and sink into the story or to head straight to the market to fill your basket with ingredients for Cider-Glazed Salmon and Pistachio Cake with Honeyed Apricots.

Years ago, when I was first got into blogging, I stumbled upon some non-book related blogs filled with beautiful photographs of home interiors and delicious-looking meals that satisfied my desire to live (and appreciate) a more simple life. Shauna Ahern's blog Gluten-Free Girl was one of the first sites that caught my eye and I looked forward to each new post about her life in Seattle with her husband, who at the time was a chef at a local restaurant. It wasn't just stories about their lives, but the enticing recipes that kept me reading. It was on Shauna's blog that I learned about Molly Wizenberg (who was also living in Seattle) and started following her posts on Orangette. At the time, my husband and I were living in Nebraska and we both yearned to move to the Pacific Northwest, so I lived vicariously through these blogs with each mention of Seattle and the surrounding areas, recognizing specific places we'd been to while visiting my dad and stepmom (who were living on Lake Union on their boat during that time). 

As is the way of early blogs of the late 90s and early 2000s, and much to my disappointment, Gluten-Free Girl and Orangette are both now defunct. However, both women have fairly recent published works, which is exciting for this lover of foodie memoirs. Shauna's collection of essays (Enough) was released in 2019 and Molly's third memoir (The Fixed Stars) was published in 2020. 

I've had Wizenberg's first memoir on my shelf for about a dozen years and finally pulled it from that shelf and read it this month for Nonfiction November. I don't know why I waited so long; I loved everything about it! Each chapter reveals a little bit more about Molly's childhood, time spent in France, and life as a young woman living in Seattle. The anecdotes dovetail neatly with specific recipes, many of which I have marked to someday try. 

Wizenberg's writing is conversational, yet polished, and the pages practically turned themselves. It was easy to read a dozen or so stories each night, telling myself, "just one more." Now that I've finished, I can't wait to get a copy of Delancey, which continues with Molly and Brandon's story. (Delancey is also the name of their restaurant in Seattle.)

Like most people who love to cook, I like the tangible things. I like the way the knife claps when it meets the cutting board. I like the haze of sweet air that hovers over a hot cake as it sits, cooling, on the counter. I like the way a strip of orange peel looks on an empty plate. But what I like even more are the intangible things: the familiar voices that fall out of the folds of an old cookbook, or the scenes that replay like a film reel across my kitchen wall. When we fall in love with a certain dish, I think that's what we're often responding to: that something else behind the fork or the spoon, the familiar story that food tells.

These are some of the recipes that I'd like to sample (listed for future reference):

• Burg's Potato Salad
• Blueberry-Raspberry Pound Cake
• Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger
• Burg's French Toast
• Chocolate Cupcakes with Bittersweet Glaze
• Hoosier Pie
• Fresh Ginger Cake with Caramelized Pears
• Dutch Baby Pancakes with Lemon and Sugar
• Jimmy's Pink Cookies
• Doron's Meatballs with Pine Nuts, Cilantro, and Golden Raisins
• Cider-Glazed Salmon
• French-Style Yogurt Cake with Lemon
• Butternut Soup with Pear, Cider, and Vanilla Bean
• Caramelized Cauliflower with Salsa Verde
• The Winning Hearts and Mind Cake

A Homemade Life is certain to appeal to readers who loved Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, Ann Hood's Kitchen Yarns, and Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone.