The Kitchen Congregation: Gatherings at a Timeless Hearth

A memoir of motherhood and memory by the author of The Road to My Farm centers around the lives of five women as they struggle with the joys and pain of motherhood, discussing men, children, and favorite recipes in the kitchen.

In a graceful paean to the pleasures of motherhood, friendship and food, the daughter of novelist Cynthia Seton writes of her admiration for her mother, who raised five children while maintaining a stimulating intellectual life. At the center of their household was cooking, which Seton's mother saw as offering sustenance and hospitality. Seton herself re-creates her mother's life in some ways, reveling in the role of stay-at-home mom to her two young children (another was stillborn), although she is a gifted, published writer as well (The Road to My Farm). Seton's poetic observations (a loaf of bread is as "round and tawny and warm as a cooling ember") and her palpable yearning for her lost child and her mother, who died of leukemia while the author was in college, give this tranquil work a deeper layer of emotional resonance. Like her mother, Seton also places great value on her intense friendships with women. She profiles older friends who appear to be mother substitutesASenta, a Swiss embodiment of European dignity, and Ida, a 90-something practicing therapistAas well as an idealized intellectual exchange with her friend Laura. Coming full cycle, Seton finds herself the confidante of a young college woman. Though the quality of these portraits varies, Seton succeeds in conveying the sustenance each relationship gives her. Author tour. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Seton here moves us through time to various kitchens she's enjoyed with special friends and family members (mostly female) and embellishes reminiscences with cherished recipes that revive the spirit of that friend. We begin in the kitchens of her youth, learning about the relationships between Seton, her mother, and their friends. We empathize with the loss of her mother, novelist Cynthia Seton, then follow Seton to new kitchens as a young married woman and mother seeking companionship from older, wiser women and other young mothers. Finally, we come full circle to Seton's revelation that she is now the older, experienced, stew-making woman that her neighbor's college daughter confides in. As in The Road to My Farm, Seton's warm, fluid prose is woven together beautifully, though these chapters can also stand alone, reminiscent of some essays in Through the Kitchen Window (Beacon, 1997). Recommended for public libraries.
-Bonnie Poquette, Shorewood P.L., WI
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.