Keeping the Feast

Keeping the Feast
Paula Butturini
February 2010
272 pages

I received this book from the publisher (thank you Riverhead Books) as part of a TLC Reading Series. It was awesome (both the book, and the fact that it was free…hey, I‘m not proud).

To be honest, I was a little leery going into this one…the subtitle is “One Couple’s Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy” and I was a little nervous that I was going to get one of those “we had faith and we persevered” mushy stories that just happened to be set in Italy. ‘Cause, you know, I don’t do faith makes everything okay stories. Luckily for me, that’s not the case for this book. Butturini uses memories of food to frame a story of both life in Europe and depression. Both Butturini and her husband, John Tagliabue, grew up in big Italian clans and food was (and is) an integral part of their lives. Although the couple’s grandparents had all immigrated to the US, Butturini and Tagliabue both ended up back in Italy working as foreign correspondents. They met and fell in love in Rome, and eventually decided to marry. However, Tagliabue’s job took them away from their beloved Italy to Warsaw, Poland. While based in Poland, their world was rocked by two violent events. First, Butturini was beaten by Czechoslovak riot police while on assignment. Then, less than a month after their wedding, Tagliabue was shot while in Romania. His wounds were severe and his recovery slow. And then, he slowly slid into depression. Butturini skillfully weaves all of this together, along with what it‘s like to live and eat in Europe.

Despite the seemingly downward spiral of their lives, Butturini does not focus exclusively on the bad. Each chapter begins with a memory of food, usually from her childhood. She relates the role food played in her family, and shares many childhood memories. She talks about the delights of shopping for food in Rome, and the frustrations of shopping for food in Poland. She talks of the simple meals she prepares, and how, after her daughter was born, the joy of helping her to discover new tastes and textures.

And lest you think it’s all about food and depression, it’s also a brilliant tale of living abroad. Since I’m a sucker for travel memoirs, this was perhaps my favorite part of the book, particularly the stories of shopping in the Campo dei Fiori. When I was in Rome in 2005 (for only a week) we rented an apartment right off of the Campo. So it was fun to read about places I had been. Here are two scenes from the square, one after the market has ended, the other late at night:

Okay, back to the book. The other bonus is that Butturini can write. Well, duh, you say, she IS a journalist. Well, I’m here to tell you not every person who has lived overseas is qualified to write about it. I’ve read some dreadful accounts…some poorly written, some boring, some full of “my life is great and I’m going to keep writing books to capitalize on my initial success” (and yes, that’s a dig at a certain writer living in Tuscany). I think Butturini strikes a great balance. This story is an intimate look at how a family copes with depression, but it also contains multiple love stories. There’s Butturini’s love of her husband and their families, her love of Italy, her love of her heritage, and her love of food.

And I’m realizing that it’s difficult to describe this book coherently. Trust me when I say that Butturini’s book is NOT as muddled as my attempts to share my thoughts about it are. Check out Paula Butturini’s website for a better description of how the book came about.

Butturini will be stopping by Books on the Brain tonight (5pm PST) to answer questions. I’ll be at work (BOO!), but you should drop in and see what she has to say. And tell her she should write a cookbook!