Relish: My Life in the Kitchen Reviewed

Lucy Knisley's foodie memoir Relish: My Life in the Kitchen landed in my lap by way of my husband who picked it up at the Melbourne Writer's Festival. He's a graphic novel aficionado but, well, they've never really done much for me. However Knisley's book may well be a meeting point for the two of us.

The daughter of a chef and a gourmet, Relish is a series of short stories detailing Knisley's experiences growing up in a home where food was kind of a big deal.

Knisley is clearly a woman after my own heart, as essentially Relish is a book about a love of food and the journey it can take you on in life. Food discoveries, rebellion and comfort through food, the way certain kitchen smells transport you back to another time and place...This is Relish, a collection of food-related experiences, or is it experiences related to food, that are hopefully familiar to just about everyone. They certainly were to me.

At heart, I am a lover of good food although I do tend to suffer the same fate as Knisley with her occasional hankering for complete and utter junk. In this way Knisley's stories are relatable. She covers not only her fancy food loves but her dirty little food secrets too.

 

The record of events is not presented in traditional memoir format, neither is it your typical graphic novel. Instead the stories are told via the text, with comic strip illustrations presented to accompany and enhance the storytelling. Beautifully presented, I really enjoyed both Knisley's writing and her drawings and found them to be complimentary in rounding out the experience.

What's also fun about Relish is the inclusion of illustrated recipes at the end of each chapter, taking Knisley's  life experiences and bringing them into your own, should you so choose.

-Stevie O'C