O'Neill, Molly. Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball. New York : Schribner 2026. Print.
First Sentences:
Every one of my five brothers was born to play ball. For a long time it wasn't clear which of the boys would make it to the major leagues, but we had no doubt that The One was among us. We were the chosen. I do not recall a single moment of my childhood in which I was not imagining my family;'s life -- or my own -- as an epic tale.
Description:
Author/chef/restaurant critic Molly O'Neill was raised in Columbus, Ohio, the first of six children. Unfortunately, in her eyes, all five of her siblings were rough and ready boys. Each time her mother informed her that she was pregnant, they both tried everything they could think of to produce a girl. Yet the inevitable hospital call from her father was always the same: "You have a new little brother."
While her youngest brother, Paul, because a Hall of Fame player with the New York Yankees, Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball, is not a baseball book. The vast majority of the memories recounted are about Mollie, the narrator, as
she survives living with her rowdy family of men and her once-wealthy,
fastidious mother.
Early on, Mollie is allowed to help her mother
prepare complicated meals and desserts for the family including a fresh
pie every day. Together, they also cooked lavish delicacies for last-minute
parties hosted by a rich uncle living nearby who her mother dreamed
would repay them with wealth one day for all these special meals (Spoiler alert: he didn't). When
left on her own, Mollie continually let her curiosity and creativity
take command in the preparation of various dishes...not just
a few of which ended in splendid disaster.
As
O'Neill grew into her college years, perfecting her culinary
explorations and expanding her menus, she looked for a career that would
allow her to keep preparing food. Meanwhile, she worked two jobs,
volunteered, kept up with feminist literature, and attended anti-war
rallies. She cooked every night for her roommates and a dozen or more
friends who spontaneously stopped by for meals.
She eventually landed
in an Italian eatery in Provincetown, preparing salads and triumphing
over the obstacles intentionally put in front of her by the owner who disliked her, such as lugging cases of products to storage. Shucking oysters was her Waterloo,
struggling and struggling with the task until finally mastering it,
earning the other cooks' respect.
Other
restaurant stops followed, as well as a long friendship with Julia
Child. A few of her articles on cooking gradually gave her a stellar culinary
reputation and subsequently a job as food critic for The Boston Globe. Soon she was authoring her own cookbooks.
Of course, there is space for stories about her childhood with her brothers, watching with embarrassment as they terrorized the neighborhood with their yelling and flying balls. One neighbor refused to give back errant balls until he eventually packed to move and returned boxes of balls which he had collected. Her brothers even went through a period where they decided pooping in neighbors' yards was a thing, and encouraged this activity with other neighbor children. Each night after coming home from work, Mollie's father had to go to one or more neighbor's house to settle their complaints.
The brothers regularly showed up at friends' houses and subtly coerced other boys to practically give away valuable baseball cards or risk the wrath of five O'Neill boys:
[Their implied "consequences" left Pat] with a museum-quality collection of ten thousand cards and left most kids in Beechwold lousy with doubles of players who never made it past their rooking year....Pat was the brains. Mike was the muscle. Kevin and Robert were the foot soldiers.
Once, through her distraction, Mollie almost allowed her five-year-old brother, Paul, be killed by a car. Although instructed not to cross the street unless holding his hand, she had been absorbed in exploring a leaf fort in the park. Paul, seeing her, darted across the street to meet her and was hit. Eighteen hours of surgery to remove brain shards fixed him up. Of course, Mollie lied to her mother about what had happened:
"The nuns made me cross the street...They wouldn't let me stand there. I told him to wait for me. It's not my fault."
[Mollie noted] Of course, I had a distinguished history of lying to my mother. I lied to ease her worries, I lied to make her laugh. I lied to entertain us both. Under normal circumstances, I lied without compunction, without a second thought, and with significant elan.
Such are a few of the delightful recollections of O'Neill about her family life in Ohio and later in other cities. It's an engrossing memoir of the ups and downs of family, rebellion, goals, triumphs and failures as Molly climbed the ladder from eldest child to college radical to short order cook to critic and writer. Her inside thoughts, funny, wise, and always confident, are fully shared with us lucky readers as she tries to figure out and tackle each step in her life.
I loved it and highly recommend it to anyone who loves wry humor, family relationships, culinary arts, and simply great, warm, humorous writing.
[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]
Jackson, Shirley. Life Among the Savages
The really very funny memoir of the family life of this author who, despite her raising of children, still found time to write spell-binding novels and short stories (Previously reviewed here.)
Happy reading.
Fred
[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]
