You know what the best thing about this book is? It's not about child abuse or people heartlessly killing their mentally challenged friends.
Yes, I chose to read Melissa Ford's Life from Scratch mostly because it pretty much guaranteed that I wasn't going to be insanely depressed for several days after reading it. I needed something light and easy, and that's exactly what I got. I enjoyed reading it, even if it's probably not the most intellectually stimulating thing I've ever picked up.
In Life from Scratch, the 30-something narrator, Rachel, has recently gotten divorced from her workaholic husband, Adam. She pretty much shuts her entire life down for about a year, including quitting her job as a graphic designer. She lives off the money she got from her half of their condo, and she sits around alone in her apartment all day. Awesome. In all her infinite time, she decides to try to teach herself to cook -- something she never learned how to do, because her busy lawyer parents never cooked. Rachel starts a blog to talk about her adventures in cooking, which, of course, also allows her to get some things off her chest about the divorce. Rachel find solace in writing, and her blog becomes very, very popular. Her friends encourage her to hold a dinner party to show off her cooking skills, and lo and behold, she meets a dreamy Spanish dude named Gael. The rest of the book is about Rachel trying to move on with her life, which she hopes will include spending more time with Gael, even though she's clearly still obsessed with Adam.
This book is about as chick-lit as it sounds, although I have to admit, it's very well-written. The plot sounds kind of romance-novel-esque, but it's definitely not. It's not graphic or even sensual, really. It's not really even romantic. It's much more a book about finding yourself and being productive in a way that makes you happy (as opposed to a way that just makes money) than it is about romance.
I'm not a huge fan of Rachel, because, honestly, she's sort of neurotic and insane... Say, for example, creating a fake website to use as bait to figure out Gael's IP address so she can check to see if he reads her blog? Really? Couldn't you just ask him? Or is that too normal? She jumps to conclusions a lot, making huge deals out of nothing... It's really irritating sometimes. She thinks like a teenager. I mean, I've never been in her position, thankfully, so I don't know. Maybe divorce turns you in to a psychotic seventeen-year-old.
Anyway, most importantly, this book made me really hungry. Every time I read it, I was hungry. And I wanted to go into the kitchen and cook something. Not go to McDonalds or open a bag of chips, but cook something. Rachel didn't know anything about cooking gourmet meals, and neither do I, but she did it. I could do that. With all her annoying faults, at least she's inspiring about cooking. Stick to the blog, Rachel!
PS -- The ending? Pfffttt. It's kind of what I was hoping for, but it was still kind of irritating in a "I just read a whole book about a misunderstanding?!?!" sort of way.
3/5 stars
Read from February 23, 2011 to February 27, 2011
--C
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