The compulsively readable memoir of a woman at war—with herself, with her body, and with food—while working her way through the underbelly of New York City’s glamorous culinary scene.
Hannah Howard is a Columbia University freshman when she lands a hostess job at Picholine, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Manhattan. Eighteen years old and eager to learn, she’s invigorated by the manic energy … the manic energy and knife-sharp focus of the crew. By day Hannah explores the Columbia arts scene, struggling to find her place. By night she’s intoxicated by boxes of heady truffles and intrigued by the food industry’s insiders. She’s hungry for knowledge, success, and love, but she’s also ravenous because she hasn’t eaten more than yogurt and coffee in days.
Hannah is hiding an eating disorder. The excruciatingly late nights, demanding chefs, bad boyfriends, and destructive obsessions have left a void inside her that she can’t fill. To reconcile her relationships with the food she worships and a body she struggles to accept, Hannah’s going to have to learn to nourish her soul.
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I really liked this book. It is honest and entertaining, while telling an important story of recovery from disordered eating and a series of unhealthy relationships. It was so enjoyable, that it is one of those books that I am a little sad to finish because I know I will miss it.
Feast is a beautiful, heartbreaking, and life-affirming story that anyone who has ever struggled to define a healthy relationship with food will be able to relate to. I couldn’t put it down.
A different look at the NYC restaurant scene than you normally see. A very honest (to my knowledge) conversation about eating disorders and how they can control a person. Sad to see the way she is so at war with herself throughout the novel.
The journey of someone overcoming an eating disorder with lots of insight into her struggle and recovery but with a focus on living life.
I didn’t like it enough to give it 5 stars, but it’s a decent memoir showcasing the world of chefs and commercial kitchens
The author writes with unflinching honesty about her struggles with food addiction. She is also entertaining and funny, despite the seriousness of her problem. She communicates her love of food and of the world of restaurants behind-the-scenes, as she takes us on about a 10-year journey of working in restaurants, starting as a student at Columbia University. Great read!
Interesting to get the real lowdown on eating disorders and the havoc they play on real lives.
A story of a beautiful young woman, working her way through college, working in restaurants and working through an eating disorder. She has to please so many people that she finds it impossible to please herself! She has professors, chefs, boyfriends, and is surrounded by food, food and more food!!! Her story is a fascinating trip you should ride along with her!!!
Hannah Howard tells her story with honesty, insight, humor and deliciously descriptive prose. Feast is a gripping, moving memoir, a book that lives up its name.
I got tired of her telling me how beautiful she was while she was generally treated well by everyone. Yes she was raped but she never dealt with this in the book, nor did she have any friends, which was kinda weird. And she only had one binge and she never dealt with that either.
An immensely entertaining debut by a writer whose precision and self-preservation are that of a jet-fighter pilot — incisive, totally aware of the forces around her and her own fallibility.
Heartfelt, heartbreaking, and courageously generous, Feast is one of the most memorable and important debuts I’ve ever read. With beautiful lyricism and unflinching storytelling, Hannah Howard weaves together addiction, love, fear, sexism, insecurity, ambition, and trauma in a way I’ve never seen done before. As with everything, with every life, Feast isn’t a story about one thing, but rather how intersecting, manifold, and even contradictory things make up a life. It’s a story about the miraculousness of becoming yourself. A must-read for anyone who’s ever wanted to escape their body, for anyone who has loved deeply and wrongly, for anyone who has dared to forgive themselves.
A gorgeous, painful reckoning with food, femininity, and ambition — a moving look at a young woman becoming herself in the grueling culture of New York City restaurants. There’s an affecting tension between Howard’s passion for exquisite food and an eating disorder that has become a ‘soundtrack’ to her life. This is a book full of heartbreak and delight, with appealing expertise from a talented writer who has been in the trenches, sampling suckling pig, taking the temperature of trout, dodging the unwanted advance from the chef. Rich, complex, and compulsively readable.
Brave and beautifully written, Feast is an addictive read. Hannah Howard brilliantly captures the complicated relationships so many of us have with food, love, sex, and ourselves in lyrical prose that will make you hungry for more.
This is a very honest account of the authors, love/hate relationship with food, and the way it affects every aspect of her life.
I think most of us have been in a situation where we just want to inhale everything around us, I know I have. This is a constant balance for her, which leads her to find ways of controlling her urges, whether it be, food control, the wrong men, or self loathing, for things out of her control. You name it.
This book was really interesting to read it brings us into her life, and shows us how she goes about trying to achieve things that she has always wanted to do in her life. Meanwhile taking us through all of the hard ups and downs to finally come to a comfortable place, in her own mind and body.
I loved reading about her friendships, her love interests and of the hardship of working in restaurants that are grueling, but teaching her on the way what she needs and wants.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Little A for the ARC of this book.
Eating disorder as the main focus of the book was disturbing and the main character’s reactions to food and the healing from the disorder were disturbing yet admirable.