Memoirs can sometimes be the best of non-fiction or the worst of it, the stories of the person involved either inspirational and moving or wearisome and full of conceit. "Season To Taste", a memoir by freelance writer Molly Birnbaum, falls somewhere in the middle, taking pre-written material from her blog (mymadeleine.com) and a 2008 New York Times article ("Finally, The Scent of the City") and recounting a traumatic period in her life. It is told in an interesting but somewhat drab fashion and provides little as far as personal transformation in the face of adversity.
The short of it: Molly Birnbaum, a recent graduate of Brown University, has an epiphany and decides she wants to be a chef. Acting upon her revelation, she applies for a job at the Craigie Street Bistrot in Cambridge, MA where head chef Tony Maws takes her under his wing despite her complete lack of experience, hiring her on drive and passion alone. Just four months from her start date at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, she is hit by a car while out on a morning jog and suffers severe injuries, recovering from all save for the prolonged and unexpected injury of anosmia, a corollary of her concussion. Her hopes of a career in food and cooking dashed, she sets out to find out more about the mysteries (how our sense of smell works and how it is tied deeply to emotion and memories) behind one of our most underrated senses while coping with the physical and psychological challenges she faces as a result.
The book is divided into eight lengthy sections, beginning with Birnbaum's explications on food and her time at the Craigie Street Bistrot, followed shortly by her accident and the distressing realization that she is anosmatic when her stepmother bakes an apple crisp and she cannot smell it or taste it (as most who've suffered a bad head cold will testify, sense of smell and taste go hand in hand). She then segues into the science of olfaction, coupling it with her recovery from her injuries, her anxiety over and avoidance of cooking, the sudden and unexpected return of select smells (the first odors she detects are rosemary and chocolate), phantom smells (at one point Birnbaum claims to be able to smell her own brain), her short-lived relationship with a man named Alex, her conversations with other anosmics, doctors and a few scientists (in particular British neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks), her return to the kitchen and the advent of true love with Matt, an Iraq/Afghanistan war veteran.
Birnbaum does some extensive globetrotting throughout this memoir, first in Africa during college (how this was a part of her major in the History of Art and Architecture I do not know), to France with a friend, to Argentina with Matt, and then back to France (Grasse) to take a course in the art of perfuming. I have to concur with a previous reviewer as far as wondering how Birnbaum had the means to afford to travel so frequently on such modest incomes (line cook, bakery assistant, freelance writer) - after a while, and since she does not bother elucidating this (among many other things), I had to conclude that she comes from an affluent family. This affluence can make anyone who reads this, anosmic or not, feel frustrated, as it begs the question of how someone without the author's financial cushion would cope in a similar situation.
Birnbaum provides the reader with a lot of facts, scientific and otherwise (Ben Cohen, one half of the duo behind the wildly successful Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, is an anosmic). While interesting, they tend to take away from the heart of her memoir and make a personal story come off journalistic and somewhat dispassionate. Her fact-stating, zealous sleuthing and visitations to factories, medical facilities and laboratories was like reading a combination of Mary Roach and Rebecca Skloot (who, while primarily a science writer, writes with more feeling than Birnbaum). Most people pick up memoirs because they want to know more about a person's life - "Season To Taste" doesn't tell us much about the author other than that she is passionate about food, she lost her sense of smell in a car accident and eventually regained it, and that she's had at least three lovers. When she talks science and research, she loses me. When she talks food and describes smells, she has my complete attention. Her most interesting segment is her description of a meal she has at Alinea, a restaurant run by a young and visionary chef named Grant Achatz who, ironically enough, lost his sense of taste from a bout of tongue cancer. Instead of allowing his handicap to cripple his art form, he finds inspiration in strengthening the sensory experience of eating by artfully inserting complimentary and unusual smells during his meals, transforming the simple and sometimes mindless act of eating into an unconventional and thrilling art form.
Birnbaum and I also meet up regarding the depression she sinks into after her sense of smell vanished, her dreams of becoming a chef vanquished. Her zeal for cooking took a nosedive (pardon the pun) as did her love life, her nose unable to detect some of the more subtle scents that can aid in physical attraction (she cites cosmetic smells as well as natural odors of the skin and the invisible and inexplicable workings of pheromones). It would be easy for me to lose my joie de vivre - the taste of my favorite foods no longer lighting up my palette, my favorite smells (roast chicken, coffee, baking bread) no longer whetting my appetite, or the scent of my husband's and childrens' skin and hair no longer offering me comfort and happiness would paint a gray and dreary portrait of my life indeed. It goes well with the old saying, "You don't know what you've got `till it's gone"; many of us don't realize what an enormous role smell plays in our lives until it suddenly disappears and we can no longer tell if we are burning that roast in the oven, that our underarms are ripe with body odor, that certain foods are beginning to spoil, or that our stove is leaking gas. And when we cannot taste our food, much less smell it, the act of eating has lost its greatest pleasure - it becomes another mechanical act in the vein of brushing our teeth, combing our hair, tying our shoes. We are simply going through the motions, the loss of one of life's most basic and fulfilling pleasures dealing a swift and insidious blow to our emotional core.
Bottom line: If the science behind our bodies tickles your fancy, "Season To Taste" will be a delightful and insightful read. If you want a deeply personal and inspiring tale of one's struggle against the odds and how it changed them for the better, look elsewhere. Though the memoir may at times cook up some delicious imagery, it rarely lifts the spoon to stir the pot of emotion on the back burner.
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