Memoir Monday... Hannibal Lecter?

Hannibal Lecter: A Life by Brian Raftery... From Kirkus Reviews:  A famed cannibal gets the biography treatment. It’s been 44 years since Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer with a taste for human flesh, was unleashed on the world, but he’s never far from the public imagination. Consider President Donald Trump’s repeated, seemingly admiring invocations of the murderer during his 2024 campaign, which journalist and author Raftery writes about (with understandable confusion) in the prologue to this book about the killer who first appeared in Thomas Harris’ 1981 novel Red Dragon. Raftery writes that “as modern pop culture menaces go, Lecter’s as recognizable as Harry Potter’s Voldemort, as imitated as Halloween’s Michael Myers, and as quotable as The Social Network’s Mark Zuckerberg.” (Is there a Facebook reaction for “ouch”?) Raftery traces the evolution of Lecter, originally a “shadows-dwelling second banana” in Red Dragon who took the main stage in Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs (1988), Hannibal (1999), and Hannibal Rising (2006). He also looks at the screen adaptations of Harris’ novels, and the actors who portrayed him: most memorably Anthony Hopkins, of course, but also Brian Cox, Gaspard Ulliel, and Mads Mikkelsen. Raftery shows remarkable insight into historical and cultural forces behind Lecter, who, he writes, “had not been invented so much as been summoned up from the country’s bloodstained terrain”—a reference to the rash of American serial killers in the 1970s. Raftery’s book is based on older interviews with people involved in the books and films, as well as new ones, but he was unable to convince the famously media-shy Harris to talk to him. It turns out not to matter—his research is so dogged that the book succeeds anyway. The title of the book cheekily suggests this is a biography, and it is, but it’s more than that: It’s a beautifully written and intelligent work of literary and film history, and an incisive look at American culture writ large.

A fascinating book, perhaps best enjoyed with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

I remember seeing The Silence of the Lambs in the movie theater. OMG, talk about terrifying!! When I saw this STARRED review from Kirkus Reviews of a biography/memoir of Hannibal Lecter, I had to read what it was about. Definitely for movie buffs, and anyone fascinated by the character, this seems like the perfect read. Mysterious, it seems, is the author behind the character, who refuses to talk about Hannibal. And that "mysteriousness" would also include the actor who brought Hannibal to life on the screen, Anthony Hopkins. I'm so curious about this book now. Are you curious too? On my TBR list...

Published by Simon & Schuster this past February 10th.

Memoir Monday...Home Schooling Gone Wild?

                                                   Home Schooled by Stefan Merrill Block

From Goodreads... A heartbreaking and empowering debut memoir about a mother’s all-consuming love, a son’s perilous quest to discover the world beyond the front door and the unregulated homeschool system that impacts millions like him.

Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were “stifling his creativity.” With no background in education and no formal training, she began to instruct Stefan in the family’s living room. Beyond his formal lessons in math, however, Stefan was largely left to his own devices and his mother’s erratic whims. She forced him to bleach his hair and to crawl like a baby in a strange and regressive attempt to recapture his early years. 

Long before homeschooling would become a massive nationwide movement, at a time when it had just become legal in his home state of Texas, Stefan vanished into that unseen space and into his mother’s increasingly eccentric theories and projects. But when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening.

At once a novelistic portrait of mother and son, and an illuminating window into an overlooked corner of the American education system, Homeschooled is a moving, funny and ultimately inspiring story of a son’s battle for a life of his own choosing, and the wages of a mother’s all-consuming love.

Lots of buzz about this book and a Read With Jenna pick, Home Schooled looks like an interesting read. I wonder how Stefan dealt with all of this and how his life turned out. On my Wishlist... 

Published by Hanover Square Press on January 6, 2025 and available at your local bookstore! 

Memoir Monday... This Monday it's all about food

 

There's something about a memoir about a "foodie" that I think just resonates with everyone. We all eat, right?! We all have a relationship with food and I'm sure we all have memories of eating, cooking, cooking disasters. Ever since I read Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl  I have loved memoirs about cooks and critics alike. When I received an invitation to read Zahra Tangorra's memoir, Extra Sauce I jumped at the chance! 

Here's the blurb from the publisher...

"A raw and raucous memoir from chef and writer Zahra Tangorra about the great meals and great loves of her life, reflecting on family, friendship, grief, and the solace that can be found through food

At twenty-two years old, Zahra Tangorra was trying on adulthood and attempting to find herself when a harrowing near-death experience stopped her in her tracks. It felt like a twisted version of a second chance. Who am I? she asked herself. What do I love? The answers started coming to her: Stuffed shells and giant meatballs at J&J’s, the Italian red sauce joint of her Long Island childhood. Her mother’s chocolate mousse pie and her father’s sweet and savory pea soup. The people, places, and experiences that made her her, the relationships both loving and fraught—they were all, for better and sometimes worse, inextricably bound up with food.

In this memoir that celebrates both the delicious and the messy in life, Zahra reckons with the adrenaline-filled highs and devastating lows of opening cult-favorite Brooklyn restaurant Brucie and then closing it at the height of its popularity. From cooking her father his last meal and the unexpected yet beautiful things she found at the bottom of her grief to the relationships she couldn’t save through cooking, like her fractured family and the lover she had to leave in Tuscany, Zahra writes about the immense courage it takes to allow ourselves to be loved, extra sauce and all."

You'll have to hold the sauce until April 26, 2026, when Extra Sauce by Zahra Tangorra is available from your local bookstore! Published by The Dial Press an imprint of Random House.