I enjoy reading titles on bookshelves. I want to know what people are reading; it’s a question I frequently ask. Similarly, I like to know what my friends and family have to eat when they go to a restaurant, host a dinner or are dinner guests. That’s why when a dear friend sent me a copy of What She Ate by Laura Shapiro it was perfect in so many ways because of the content and it’s such a thoughtful expression of friendship.
Shapiro’s book is subtitled Six Remarkable Women & the Food that Their Stories Tell. These are not women that necessarily first come to mind. There’s no Julia Child or Alice Waters among them. While they’re fascinating, the half dozen Shapiro profiles are engaging for a number of reasons, some because they are familiar and some because they are not.
Only one, Rosa Lewis, a London caterer during King Edward VII’s reign, has a direct link to food or cooking. The others are Dorothy Wordsworth, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Barbara Pym and Helen Gurley Brown.
There is as much about the women’s relationship with food as a reflection of the eras in which they lived. Braun, for example, was more interested in maintaining a slim figure than eating. The foods she ignored, riches only available to the Nazi elite, further highlight that regime’s cruelty.
At times, though, Shapiro gets bogged down with too much detail. Overall, this is an intriguing look at those she researched with food at its heart.
What She Ate
Four Bookmarks
Viking, 2017
307 pages, including notes and index
The Blue Page Special 