Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite

There are those people who can eat a buffet-table full of food and not gain an ounce. You know them... heck, you may be one of them. For some of us, this is sadly not always the case. Frank Bruni's brutally honest memoir stands out as an accounting of a life where this may be true. Food isn't just food, it becomes a habit. A lifestyle. A ghost in your life that everything else revolves around. This is the story of his struggles and exaltations regarding it. Bruni is a great writer. This book is engulfing. It's a, forgive the phrase, entertaining melancholy, of sorts. It's no small task to write an autobiography that is always interesting, and for the most part, this book is. Most often, I skip the "childhood chapters" in such books, but here I found myself engrossed, and reading them. Perhaps it was because I've had to fight this struggle, myself. The transformation from being a slave to food, to liberated under it... truly, Mr. Bruni has conquered so much. We all must find peace with our ways of life, and this is not a tale about a struggle with food (well it is, of course) but so much the story of a man who has conquered his inner demons to fulfill his potential. It's inspiring and encouraging to read.

Frank Bruni's new memoir Born Round chronicles the longtime New York Times columnist's lifelong struggle with food. Born into a large Italian family where cooking is a contact sport, Bruni begins to struggle with his weight as a child, and continues to struggle with it into adulthood and beyond. He tries all manner of fad diets and even eating disorders and drugs before discovering his holy grail for consumption in his mid-30s--eat food in small portions and exercise constantly. He finally has his weight and his life under control when he embarks on a great food journey--becoming the food reviewer for the Times. I loved this memoir, and I'm not usually a huge memoir fan. Bruni gives overeating and excess weight a very human face that anyone who has ever struggled to balance a love of food and weight can appreciate. The same wit that made his columns must reads in the weekly Times food section (and I don't even live in NYC!) make this a wonderful read. The book is at times laugh out loud funny, and at other times deeply emotional. It helps that Bruni has led a very interesting life and his tidbits about life as a reporter--particularly while on the campaign trail with President George W. Bush in 1999 and 2000--just lend more color to this already very colorful book. If you're looking for an enjoyable and fast read, I would recommend this book. However I will warn that the book contains material about eating disorders, so if you are sensitive about this subject, or fad dieting, you might want to avoid. Bruni does not advocate these things, but he is honest about his experiences.

I've always enjoyed reading Frank Bruni's down-to-earth restaurant reviews in the New York Times and his memoir, Born Round is written in the same easy-going and engaging style. Bruni writes about his food-centered Italian-American upbringing and his lifelong struggle to keep his weight under control. As a female reader, it was interesting to read about weight control from a male perspective. But what I really enjoyed most about the book were the portraits of his mother and Italian grandmother. He obviously loved them dearly and his portrayal of them is, to me, the heart of the book. Bruni is an open-hearted and accessible writer. Highly recommended!

For many of us this will at last be a book to identify with. It seems most fight with addictions to something which can range from the most thought of - alcohol and drugs to physical exercise and what so many are fighting today - the addiction to food. This book is an excursion through Frank Bruni's ages of food - his love and pure joy of it engulfs and overwhelms his child hood and about the first 100 pages of his story, then falls into his growing battle with weight gain. His descriptions of food loved and memories of childhood foods and his Italian family can make you laugh in pure pleasure and remembrance. His ability to draw you into his feelings and life are readily apparent from the first page to the last; including his marvelous description as the middle child caught between the charismatic and confident older brother and the younger space cadet. Ah yes, but Frank can out eat any one and so begins his war with his body and proceeds with his narratives of what he's thinking and the food obsessions as he goes through his high school, college and professional years. So many of us can identify with dates postponed, old friends put off because weight has been gained and the diets that will start Monday with a binge before the diet and failure by Wednesday. This book is an interesting read, but could just as well be used as psychological study, one that can explain the lure of food to those who just don't understand. It can also be a cathartic read for those of us that struggle - you aren't the only one out there - recognize the cop outs we use: it must be the weight ...I'm not getting dates, not getting invited to parties, not getting promoted. This can allow you to see yourself or someone you care about. Bruni is astute enough that he sees how excess weight can result in your brain fooling itself that one does not look as large as one does and how it put his life on hiatus. He will not do this or that until the weight is gone, which will be sometime in the near distant future. Frank Bruni becomes a New York food critic, an amazingly tough job for anyone. At the risk of giving away the end of the book smaller portions and exercise win out; but then it ends with the realization, that as with all addictions you can fall again. Those of us that wish to understand either our, or other's food problems would be well advised to read this book. Of course those who would just like an interesting book to read would be well advised to read it too.

That Frank Bruni is a gifted writer should be self-evident by virtue of his long tenure as a reporter for the NEW YORK TIMES. His renowned restaurant reviews of the past five years have been models of food aware insight of the highest standards, and of telling turns of phrase. Thus it is no surprise that BORN ROUND, his memoir, is beautifully written and fascinating. What this memoir is not about, however -- not much, anyway -- is the fine art of restaurant reviewing. Fairly enough, BORN ROUND is all about him. His discourse about his life-long obsession with food, far more often as a glutton than as a connoisseur, is moving, while disturbing at the same time. The consequence of both his excessive weight for much of his life (but not now), and his feelings of self-loathing as a result of that excess, would effectively cause him to withdraw socially from life. He writes about this ongoing problem with great self-awareness and honesty, to a degree that is admirable. Having had my own weight battles and bouts of yo-yo dieting, it was with that shock of recognition that I was startled to see him identify syndromes that I never had acknowledged personally. The descriptions of his childhood, his family, their lively and delicious meals, all make for a compelling report. Despite his fierce reputation, his love for his family -- most of all, for his mother and paternal grandmother -- makes him sound simply nice. The Brunis disprove Tolstoy's theory that happy families are all alike. The brief section he includes on the vagaries of restaurant reviewing is entertaining, especially for those of us who have an interest in the topic. Overall, BORN ROUND is an extremely worthwhile book, all the more so for anyone in a constant battle against weight gain. Inescapably, though, it also is a sad history. By his own account, Mr. Bruni seems to have gotten his demons under control. I wish him good luck.