Bittersweet

Bittersweet picked by Newsweek as Worth Your Time

Bittersweet: Lessons from my Mother's Kitchen
Bittersweet will be published in the Spring of 2010 by Bloomsbury in the UK. Also available direct from Bloomsbury

Signed Copies?

Extras not in the book:
»More Photos
»A Short Story by Ann

Recipes
»Recipes from the book
»Recipes from the UK edition, out in April 2010
»More of my favorite recipes

Reviews

Events & Appearances

See what readers are saying about Bittersweet on Goodreads.com

"As a war reporter, Matt Mcallester had many dangerous assignments, but none were more difficult than investigating the life and death of his doomed mother, Anne. Bittersweet is a story of love, war, death, madness, alcohol, motherhood, the bond between mother and sons - but ultimately about love. The result is a beautiful book, tragic, haunting but always deeply moving. I cried when I read it, but I wanted to read it until the very last page."
-Janine di Giovanni, Author of Madness Visibly

"In Bittersweet, Matt McAllester, one of the most gifted writers of his generation, has crafted a love story of the first order. His unflinching honesty will make you cry. His culinary adventures will lead you to put on an apron. And his graceful storytelling will transfix you. It is the most sumptuous of literary treats."
- Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

"A book by one of our finest war-reporters, whose beat this time is not the battlefield but the kitchen. The precision of his descriptions, his frankness, and his defiant irony - for this is also a very funny book - gives us a powerful portrait of a family's courage, tragedy and love."
- Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between

Matt McAllester lost his mother, Ann, long before she died, as mental illness snatched the once-elegant woman away and destroyed his childhood. In this beautifully written memoir, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist chronicles the journey he took to forgiveness, which brought him straight to the place that evoked his happiest memories of his mother: the kitchen. Recounting the pleasures of his early days, culinary and otherwise, McAllester weaves an unforgettable tale of family, food, and love.

At first, Matt McAllester's childhood was idyllic, a time when his mother placed heavenly, delicious food at the center of a family life brimming with fun and laughter. Then came the terrible years, years when he had to watch helplessly as his warm, quick-witted mother succumbed to an illness that was never properly diagnosed or understood. Desperate to escape, he eventually found work as a foreign correspondent, hiding in the terrors and tragedies of other people as he traveled to the most dangerous places in the world, from Beirut to Baghdad. But nothing he saw on the battlefield prepared him for his mother's death and his own overwhelming grief.

In the weeks and months that followed, Matt found himself poring over old family photos and letters, trying to reach out for the beautiful, caring woman who had now vanished for the second time. But as he looked anew at her long-cherished collection of cookbooks, it occurred to him that the best way to find her was through something they both loved: the food she had once lovingly prepared for him, food that introduced him to a thousand sources of joy from spare ribs to the homemade strawberry ice cream that seemed in memory the very essence of happy times.

With a reporter's precision and a storyteller's grace, McAllester guides us through a long season of grief cooking, eating, and remembering at the same time describing his and his wife's efforts to conceive and nourish a child of their own.

Complete with recipes to delight body and soul, Bittersweet is a memoir of extraordinary power, at once a moving tribute to his mother and a dazzling feast for the senses.

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