The Man Who Couldn't Eat
Jon Reiner
Sep 2011 · Simon and Schuster
3.7star
3 reviewsreport
Ebook
320
Pages
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About this ebook
“I’m a glutton in a greyhound’s body, a walking contradiction, in the grip of the one thing I can’t have—food.”
Food is not just sustenance. It is memories, a lobster roll on the beach in Maine; heritage, hot pastrami club with a half-sour pickle; guilty pleasures, a chocolate rum-soaked Bundt cake; identity, vegetarian or carnivore. Food is the sensuality of a ripe strawberry or a pork chop sizzling on the grill. But what if the very thing that keeps you alive, that bonds us together and marks occasions in our lives, became a toxic substance, an inflammatory invader? In this beautifully written memoir, both gut-wrenching and inspiring, award-winning writer Jon Reiner explores our complex and often contradictory relationship with food as he tells the story of his agonizing battle with Crohn’s disease—and the extraordinary places his hunger and obsession with food took him.
The Man Who Couldn’t Eat is an unvarnished account of a marriage in crisis, children faced with grown-up fears, a man at a life-and-death crossroads sifting through his past and his present. And it shows us a tough, courageous climb out of despair and hopelessness. Aided by the loving kindness of family, friends, and strangers and by a new approach to food, Reiner began a process of healing in body and mind. Most of all, he chose life—and a renewed appetite, any way he could manage it, for the things that truly matter most.
Food is not just sustenance. It is memories, a lobster roll on the beach in Maine; heritage, hot pastrami club with a half-sour pickle; guilty pleasures, a chocolate rum-soaked Bundt cake; identity, vegetarian or carnivore. Food is the sensuality of a ripe strawberry or a pork chop sizzling on the grill. But what if the very thing that keeps you alive, that bonds us together and marks occasions in our lives, became a toxic substance, an inflammatory invader? In this beautifully written memoir, both gut-wrenching and inspiring, award-winning writer Jon Reiner explores our complex and often contradictory relationship with food as he tells the story of his agonizing battle with Crohn’s disease—and the extraordinary places his hunger and obsession with food took him.
The Man Who Couldn’t Eat is an unvarnished account of a marriage in crisis, children faced with grown-up fears, a man at a life-and-death crossroads sifting through his past and his present. And it shows us a tough, courageous climb out of despair and hopelessness. Aided by the loving kindness of family, friends, and strangers and by a new approach to food, Reiner began a process of healing in body and mind. Most of all, he chose life—and a renewed appetite, any way he could manage it, for the things that truly matter most.
Ratings and reviews
3.7
3 reviews
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November 6, 2011
What an interesting read. After reading the book, I am still asking myself questions. How often does my day center around food? How many times a week do I schedule visits with friends and family where food is the main decision?
The reader meets Jon Reiner, a husband and father of two young boys who has been battling Crohn's disease for more than 20 years. With Crohn's disease being an illness that does not have a cure, but with changing a lifestyle you can live with the disease, I would still call it a terminal illness. As we meet him, he has been struck down by the disease and is fighting for his life. I appreciated where he started this book, so right from the start you are in the heart of his story and are enveloped into his world.
The part of the story that struck me the most was seeing the impact that his disease and health have and had on both his wife and two boys. Sometimes I don't think we realize that our status can absolutely affect those around us both in positive and negative ways.
A book that takes you behind the scenes of a family that as a whole must overcome this disease and learn to live a life without food as a center.
About the author
JON REINER won the 2010 James Beard Foundation Award for Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes for the collaborative Esquire article “How Men Eat.” His memoir, The Man Who Couldn’t Eat, is based on an acclaimed article of the same name that he wrote for Esquire in 2009. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.
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