Book #32: Not Becoming My Mother

Title: Not Becoming My Mother: and other things she taught me along the way
Author: Ruth Reichl

Miriam Reichl figures prominently in her daughter Ruth's food memoirs (Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples and Garlic and Sapphires), all of which are fantastic reads, so I was excited to pick up Reichl's newest book, Not Becoming My Mother. When I got it at the library last week, I was surprised at how small and light it was-- barely 100 small pages, and in truth, there's not much to it. It's a story we've heard before (or lived before): smart girl who wants to be a doctor and bows to cultural pressures first in choice of occupation, then in choice of spouse, and ends up frustrated, unhappy, and resolved not to allow her daughter to make the same mistakes she did. Reading it right after The Believers was an interesting experience, since both Reichl and Audrey Litvinoff were New York Jews of a certain age who faced similar life choices with similar unhappy results. Where are the stories of women who chose family over career and ended up happy? Do those stories even exist?