How to Cook Your Daughter: A Memoir

I found this book to be an engrossing memoir of growing up in the Seventies in New York, and although incest was certainly the catalyst for writing it, the main focus is on this particular family's bohemian lifestyle rather than the actual incidents of incest. The book is insightful, honest and very powerful. I have read many other memoirs in the past few months, among them THE GLASS CASTLE and OH THE GLORY OF IT ALL, and HOW TO COOK YOUR DAUGHTER, though very painful, is a sincere and positive effort on Ms. Hendra's part to deal with situations which almost completely overwhelmed her. When I first heard of Ms. Hendra's incentive for writing this book, I was a bit skeptical as to whether this would be in her best interests, but after reading it I am totally convinced that for the sake of the emotional health of her own family, it was very important for her to confront the issue head-on in response to her Father's own memoir, FATHER JOE. This book is so much more than a book about incest. It is a poignant and remarkable look at an unusual family where a father's bizarre and often brilliant sense of humor and his total lack of concern or interest in his family's welfare brought intense pain and confusion to those he claimed to love. It was a family in crisis, with each individual member trying to survive in her own way. It seems very clear that Ms. Hendra has made very positive choices in her adulthood, and fortunately in this case, history did not repeat itself; she was smart enough and strong enough to take all the negative aspects of her own childhood and turn them around so that her own daughters are being raised with the good values and unconditional love that her parents were unable and unwilling to give to her and her sister. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who enjoys reading memoirs and learning about the way other people deal with life will find this one right up there with the best of them.

I always find it interesting when people criticize others for telling their stories. I always thought that's what memoirs are about. Silly me. I guess it won't be surprising if Jessica Hendra takes some hits for this one. She is, after all, sharing parts of a past that I can't imagine she ever wanted to share. But this book really grabbed me in so many ways. It's not vengeful, even though, after reading it, part of you wishes it had been. It's not hysterical. It's just a story very well told, and it let's the story tell itself, really, very naturally, just sort of as it happened. I can't imagine how anyone who reads this book would have any smidgen of doubt that what Hendra says happened to her at the hands of her pseudo-famous father happened. But that's just the catalyst for the story, really. If people want to cast stones at her for writing this, I can't help but wonder why. Isn't she entitled to tell how she came to find herself after years and years of anguish? How isn't that a story that all of us should embrace? Stop comparing this book to her father's book (which, I must confess, I haven't read). On its own merits, this is an excellent, excellent work.

I generally don't read reviews except for my own enjoyment, and I've NEVER written one. But after finishing this book and seeing the reviews on this site, I wanted to add my two cents. If the reader who bashed the book had actually READ the book, he would've understood why Hendra didn't pursue legal action against her father. But isn't that beside the point? Books such as this one don't need to be vengeful. And this one isn't. Not at all. Maybe it's the difference between how men and woman read stories such as this one, but to me, I found it elevating and inspiring. Here is a woman who spent most of her life, by her own admission, lost. This is how she found herself. I don't sense that this is a book designed to get back at her father, and anyone who does probably hasn't cracked the spine. Like i said, I don't write reviews, so you probably won't find this very helpful. But let me just suggest you read this book yourself and judge for yourself. Because if you do, I'd be surprised if you don't find it as meaningful as I did. I hope Hendra is given a fair shake and not branded as something that this book is not.

Okay, I didn't expect to like this book. I'm not into tell-alls and that's what I figured this one would be. It's not. The story is obviously built around Jessica Hendra's decision to finally challenge her father after he professed that he had earned salvation by a lukewarm confession that apparently failed to include what he did to her. But this book is really about what it was like to grow up in the 70s comedy scene and how, in many ways, Hendra's childhood became hijacked by her father's "humor." The thing is, she isn't really complaining about that part of things. I think she even says at one point that she wishes the other things her father did didn't eclipse the eclectic nature of her upbringing. As a reader, I was drawn to the behind-the-scenes stuff about the National Lampoon and the infighting there, and also to the brilliance and dysfunction that is her father. What it became in the end though was a story that I found pretty universal: how someone who could've cowered in the corner the rest of her life found the strength to become her own person. It's beautifully written, in a way that feels true and honest and genuine. I think at times I felt as though I wanted her to be more angry at him. But maybe that was because I was learning for the first time about this behavior and she had dealt with it her entire life. The story flowed wonderfully and easily, and I really struggled for a place to stop reading so I could make lunch. Bravo, Jessica Hendra. It's nice for a change to see a supposed "tell-all" that isn't about slinging dirt and is more about finding oneself amid chaos and calamity.