BLUE PLATE SPECIAL An Autobiography of My Appetites

Tavia Gilbert’s voice is lovely and full of sensitivity, enthusiasm, and ruefulness—the perfect choice to convey Kate Christensen’s eventful life. Christensen vividly remembers both the shock and the breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and toast that she was eating when her hippie father was beating up her mother because her mother asked for help. Food features prominently as markers in Christensen’s life. She is comforted by her mother’s blue plate specials. Sometimes she eats everything in sight (in her “husky” phases); then she eats exactly the same food for weeks on end to lose the weight. Gilbert smoothly expresses Christensen’s emotions, ranging from regret at having had an affair to despair at her Iowa Writers’ Workshop experience, joy at writing whatever she likes, and a near disconnect at childhood sexual abuse. A.B. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2013]