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Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table
The acclaimed author of A Replacement Life shifts between heartbreak and humor in this gorgeously told recipe-filled memoir. A story of family, immigration, and love—and an epic meal—Savage Feast explores the challenges of navigating two cultures from an unusual angle.
A revealing personal story and family memoir told through meals and recipes, Savage Feast begins with Boris’s childhood in Soviet Belarus, where good food was often worth more than money. He describes the unlikely dish that brought his parents together and how years of Holocaust hunger left his grandmother so obsessed with bread that she always kept five loaves on hand. She was the stove magician and Boris’ grandfather the master black marketer who supplied her, evading at least one firing squad on the way. These spoils kept Boris’ family—Jews who lived under threat of discrimination and violence—provided-for and protected.
Despite its abundance, food becomes even more important in America, which Boris’ family reaches after an emigration through Vienna and Rome filled with marvel, despair, and bratwurst. How to remain connected to one’s roots while shedding their trauma? The ambrosial cooking of Oksana, Boris’s grandfather’s Ukrainian home aide, begins to show him the way. His quest takes him to a farm in the Hudson River Valley, the kitchen of a Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side, a Native American reservation in South Dakota, and back to Oksana’s kitchen in Brooklyn. His relationships with women—troubled, he realizes, for reasons that go back many generations—unfold concurrently, finally bringing him, after many misadventures, to an American soulmate.
Savage Feast is Boris’ tribute to food, that secret passage to an intimate conversation about identity, belonging, family, displacement, and love.
A revealing personal story and family memoir told through meals and recipes, Savage Feast begins with Boris’s childhood in Soviet Belarus, where good food was often worth more than money. He describes the unlikely dish that brought his parents together and how years of Holocaust hunger left his grandmother so obsessed with bread that she always kept five loaves on hand. She was the stove magician and Boris’ grandfather the master black marketer who supplied her, evading at least one firing squad on the way. These spoils kept Boris’ family—Jews who lived under threat of discrimination and violence—provided-for and protected.
Despite its abundance, food becomes even more important in America, which Boris’ family reaches after an emigration through Vienna and Rome filled with marvel, despair, and bratwurst. How to remain connected to one’s roots while shedding their trauma? The ambrosial cooking of Oksana, Boris’s grandfather’s Ukrainian home aide, begins to show him the way. His quest takes him to a farm in the Hudson River Valley, the kitchen of a Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side, a Native American reservation in South Dakota, and back to Oksana’s kitchen in Brooklyn. His relationships with women—troubled, he realizes, for reasons that go back many generations—unfold concurrently, finally bringing him, after many misadventures, to an American soulmate.
Savage Feast is Boris’ tribute to food, that secret passage to an intimate conversation about identity, belonging, family, displacement, and love.
373 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 26, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
January 22, 2019
A beautiful yet heartbreaking memoir of an immigrant family. A book filled with love, despair, culture and amazing food.
Boris Fishman grew up in Soviet Belarus where good food was cherished more than money. He tells us stories of his parents and grandparents and the food that impacted his life and his families.
A story of belonging and finding oneself. Beautifully written. Thank you Goodreads for an arc copy of Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table (A Memoir with Recipes) by Boris Fishman
Boris Fishman grew up in Soviet Belarus where good food was cherished more than money. He tells us stories of his parents and grandparents and the food that impacted his life and his families.
A story of belonging and finding oneself. Beautifully written. Thank you Goodreads for an arc copy of Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table (A Memoir with Recipes) by Boris Fishman
February 16, 2019
Savage Feast is a deeply personal memoir and what makes it even more special? It’s filled with recipes!
Savage Feast is a story of family, of one immigrant’s experience, a story of love, and it’s all centered around the love of food.
Boris Fishman is born in Soviet Belarus. Fishman conveys that good food was such a hot commodity in Belarus it was even more valuable than money. When he immigrates to the United States, food is more abundant, and he continues to equate it with love.
Savage Feast is a beautifully-written tribute to food, family, and much more. It was original and an exceptional reading experience. I’m keeping this review on the shorter side because this is a book to experience and savor.
I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
My reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com
Savage Feast is a story of family, of one immigrant’s experience, a story of love, and it’s all centered around the love of food.
Boris Fishman is born in Soviet Belarus. Fishman conveys that good food was such a hot commodity in Belarus it was even more valuable than money. When he immigrates to the United States, food is more abundant, and he continues to equate it with love.
Savage Feast is a beautifully-written tribute to food, family, and much more. It was original and an exceptional reading experience. I’m keeping this review on the shorter side because this is a book to experience and savor.
I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
My reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com
April 20, 2019
I had no idea who the author was, nor was I familiar or particularly interested in Russian history and cooking, and yet, this was recommended on a podcast so I thought I'd give it a go and thought it was really good. I learned a lot and had fun while doing so.
December 1, 2019
Reading this feels deeply intimate without feeling voyeuristic. The author consistently manages to "find the right distance" between himself and the reader, inviting us into his life and family with a frankness that might be awkward if rendered with less skill.
We get to see not only his ownkno struggle with identity and assimilation, but that of his family and the communities they navigate and inhabit in their adoptive country. It is hard to fathom how deeply complicated the questions raised by such a life must be. Not only is there the personal experience of coming from a people set apart and of coming from a country that no longer exists, there is the inherited history of persecution that encompasses not only violence against those that were but against those that were never to be. (As the Mishnah says, to kill a man is to kill an entire world).
While this story is largely foreign to the particulars of my own biography, the parallels to other experiences I have read and had related to me are unmistakable. My oldest and dearest friend took a similar journey thirty years ago, so certain parallels resonated with me particularly well. (Though as I noted in another review, one of the more important things I've come to understand is that each person's experience is unique and as much is to be gained by contemplating the differences as the parallels.)
We get to see not only his ownkno struggle with identity and assimilation, but that of his family and the communities they navigate and inhabit in their adoptive country. It is hard to fathom how deeply complicated the questions raised by such a life must be. Not only is there the personal experience of coming from a people set apart and of coming from a country that no longer exists, there is the inherited history of persecution that encompasses not only violence against those that were but against those that were never to be. (As the Mishnah says, to kill a man is to kill an entire world).
While this story is largely foreign to the particulars of my own biography, the parallels to other experiences I have read and had related to me are unmistakable. My oldest and dearest friend took a similar journey thirty years ago, so certain parallels resonated with me particularly well. (Though as I noted in another review, one of the more important things I've come to understand is that each person's experience is unique and as much is to be gained by contemplating the differences as the parallels.)
November 20, 2024
A memoir of family traditions; including many family recipes.
The Fishman family came from Minsk, Belarus.
The author tells the reader all about his grandfather, parents and himself, plus a cook and caregiver
who was like family.
It was hard for the older generation to adapt to American ways.
All in all it was an interesting book.
The Fishman family came from Minsk, Belarus.
The author tells the reader all about his grandfather, parents and himself, plus a cook and caregiver
who was like family.
It was hard for the older generation to adapt to American ways.
All in all it was an interesting book.
February 1, 2019
I received an uncorrected proof copy of this book from HarperCollins.
A family memoir centered by food and recipes, Savage Feast tells the author's story from his childhood in Soviet Belarus through emigration through Vienna and Rome to a new start in Brooklyn. For Boris, food and sharing meals with his family become a way to maintain his roots even as he feels pulled towards his new American life. Additionally, when Boris feels adrift, he turns to cooking and exploring in the kitchen as a way to work out his next step. This book takes Boris on journeys cooking with his grandfather's Ukrainian home aid to the kitchen of Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side to a children's camp on a Native American reservation in South Dakota.
With food as its grounding force, this memoir explores the author's experiences as an immigrant to America, whose family culture is still very much rooted in Russia. As an only child who immigrated with his parents and grandparents, Boris faces a lot of familial pressure to live a certain way while also trying to follow his dreams of writing and embracing his new home in America. I did like how he incorporated cooking, eating, and also the process of obtaining food throughout the narrative. For example, one of the first stories shared once his family reaches America is about his father trying to go buy groceries for the first time and disappearing for two hours: "'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I lost my mind.' He had gone only a block. The supermarket door had slid open by itself, whereupon he nearly toppled the tiny old Austrian woman coming out" (70). My favorite chapters were the ones that dealt with Oksana, Boris's grandfather's Ukrainian home aide, who is an experienced cook. The description of her relationship with the family, as well as the dishes she prepared, were especially vivid. Oksana herself felt somehow more fleshed out than Boris's family, most of which I didn't get a clear sense of who they were or what they were like, with the exception of his grandfather.
There was a disjointed quality to the structure of this memoir. Each chapter seemed to jump ahead in time and it was sometimes hard to pick up the thread of Boris's story and what had happened since the conclusion of the previous chapter. For instance, the book skips over the family getting settled in America, his grandmother's decline in health, and Boris's college experience. The placement of the recipes sometimes felt abrupt (perhaps this was due to this being a proof copy?) and were dropped at random throughout each relevant chapter. It seems like it would have been more orderly to arrange these either at the opening or closing of the appropriate chapter, or waiting to share them all together at the conclusion of the book. In addition, there is one chapter that details Boris's grandfather meeting Oksana for the first time. They are alone for the duration of the chapter, yet their initial conversations are quoted extensively, which didn't read like a memoir but more like a fictional account of their meeting. Not only did it feel very different from the rest of the book, which is from Boris's point of view, but it also felt almost like a standalone short story that somehow got inserted into a middle of a memoir. I did love this chapter, but it just didn't flow super well with the rest of the book.
Ultimately, this memoir is the author's tribute to food and shared experiences of meals with those closest to him as he navigates questions of identity, belonging, family, and love. I appreciated the focus on food and the inclusion of menus, but ultimately I didn't enjoy reading this as much as I had hoped and found the editing lacking.
A family memoir centered by food and recipes, Savage Feast tells the author's story from his childhood in Soviet Belarus through emigration through Vienna and Rome to a new start in Brooklyn. For Boris, food and sharing meals with his family become a way to maintain his roots even as he feels pulled towards his new American life. Additionally, when Boris feels adrift, he turns to cooking and exploring in the kitchen as a way to work out his next step. This book takes Boris on journeys cooking with his grandfather's Ukrainian home aid to the kitchen of Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side to a children's camp on a Native American reservation in South Dakota.
With food as its grounding force, this memoir explores the author's experiences as an immigrant to America, whose family culture is still very much rooted in Russia. As an only child who immigrated with his parents and grandparents, Boris faces a lot of familial pressure to live a certain way while also trying to follow his dreams of writing and embracing his new home in America. I did like how he incorporated cooking, eating, and also the process of obtaining food throughout the narrative. For example, one of the first stories shared once his family reaches America is about his father trying to go buy groceries for the first time and disappearing for two hours: "'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I lost my mind.' He had gone only a block. The supermarket door had slid open by itself, whereupon he nearly toppled the tiny old Austrian woman coming out" (70). My favorite chapters were the ones that dealt with Oksana, Boris's grandfather's Ukrainian home aide, who is an experienced cook. The description of her relationship with the family, as well as the dishes she prepared, were especially vivid. Oksana herself felt somehow more fleshed out than Boris's family, most of which I didn't get a clear sense of who they were or what they were like, with the exception of his grandfather.
There was a disjointed quality to the structure of this memoir. Each chapter seemed to jump ahead in time and it was sometimes hard to pick up the thread of Boris's story and what had happened since the conclusion of the previous chapter. For instance, the book skips over the family getting settled in America, his grandmother's decline in health, and Boris's college experience. The placement of the recipes sometimes felt abrupt (perhaps this was due to this being a proof copy?) and were dropped at random throughout each relevant chapter. It seems like it would have been more orderly to arrange these either at the opening or closing of the appropriate chapter, or waiting to share them all together at the conclusion of the book. In addition, there is one chapter that details Boris's grandfather meeting Oksana for the first time. They are alone for the duration of the chapter, yet their initial conversations are quoted extensively, which didn't read like a memoir but more like a fictional account of their meeting. Not only did it feel very different from the rest of the book, which is from Boris's point of view, but it also felt almost like a standalone short story that somehow got inserted into a middle of a memoir. I did love this chapter, but it just didn't flow super well with the rest of the book.
Ultimately, this memoir is the author's tribute to food and shared experiences of meals with those closest to him as he navigates questions of identity, belonging, family, and love. I appreciated the focus on food and the inclusion of menus, but ultimately I didn't enjoy reading this as much as I had hoped and found the editing lacking.
April 27, 2019
I loved the story, intertwined with so many unique recipes!!!
July 23, 2024
My favorite kind of family memoir is one that is as much about food as it is about the people and their experiences. Years ago, I read and loved Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, by Anya von Bremzen. I’ve been hunting around for something similar since. When I read an excerpt from Savage Feast, in which Boris Fishman discusses the mix of smugness and shame he feels when he is the person on a plane with dozens of tinfoil bundles of profoundly garlicky food, I knew I needed to read the rest of the memoir. Like von Bremzen, Fishman offers recipes and memories from Russian history. He adds his own journey through cultural schizophrenia, heartbreak, and depression to acceptance and love along with the memories and recipes. Like all good food-based memoirs, this one made me hungry; I flagged a few of the recipes to try out in my kitchen...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
May 7, 2019
I think I am in the minority with this review. I’d heard the author speak on NPR and was eager to have the book. He was eloquent. But his book was choppy. The stories were bumpy, hard to grasp, his descriptions were just off the mark. I ended up not caring about his story because I couldn’t follow it. However two things struck me. First, his struggle with Judaism as a young man raised in the former USSR, two generations after WWII, were interesting. He called himself an atheist but at the same time wanted more from his family with their lack of commitment to tradition, to religion and Passover Seder. Second, I enjoyed the recipes - little delicious respites, scattered throughout the book.
March 18, 2019
Larger than life characters, plenty of food, and lots of angst and guilt populate this enjoyable story about three generations of an immigrant family.
August 18, 2019
I didn't finish it. The recipes did not interest me. I had trouble with the skipping around and the knowing which generation he was talking about.
November 25, 2021
I stumbled upon Boris Fishman's Savage Feast: A Memoir with Recipes on a recent trip to the public library. I found the cover, depicting a crowded table with the remains of a colorful and somewhat elaborate (in its complexity not fanciness) meal, immediately enticing given that we were in the lead-up to Thanksgiving and I was pondering my own menu and pre-booster calculus of who and how many to safely include.
The book delivers on the topics advertised in its title and, best yet, it goes a bit beyond in so far as it also delves into the author's career path, his mental health journey, emotional unavailability and self-sabotage in the relationship department, and great love of his in turns loving, demanding, challenging, perplexing, frustrating, and infinitely human immediate family (including his parents, maternal grandparents, and later in the story his grandfather's caregiver, Oksana). As an anthropologist and third-generation American born of immigrants from countries quite different from Fishman's Belarus origins (with benefit of a spouse of second-generation cultural and religious Jewish and eastern European origins), what I found most interesting and immediately relatable were the role that food, meals, inter-generational expectations, squabbles, and the admittedly arbitrary but nonetheless inescapable roles one is assigned relatively early in life within the larger family drama and how deftly these were developed and interwoven here. Even if you don't want to prepare any of the recipes contained in the book, please do read them as they are every bit as much a part of the text and contain their own insights and observations as does the surrounding narrative.
What I will carry forward is juxtaposing the author's description of a vacation he took at age six with his extended family to the "Soviet Riviera" of Crimea. There, despite his grandfather Arkady's highly effective ability to grease wheels in order to maximize life's opportunities and gain access to deficit food items, six-year old Boris noted that his family was never able to access the "sanatorium" whose politically-connected guests gorged themselves on coveted foodstuffs in what he characterized as "savage leisure." Juxtaposing this account against the memoir's title of Savage Feast gives the reader something to ponder long after they've turned the last page.
At one point, the author notes that in usage his native language does not tackle criticism head-on and, instead, one must learn to listen to what is not being said. It's a point he sidles up to in several places, perhaps most adroitly when telling the story of wanting to help Oksana in her cramped apartment kitchen in regional Ukraine (Ivano-Frankovsk, for those keeping score) when he realizes she is cooking in the middle of the night in preparation for a large family gathering. She keeps asking him if he wouldn't like to have something to eat and return to sleep, and it slowly dawns on him that his inexpert "assistance" is perhaps only slowing her down. Instead of surrendering his workspace, he decides to chop faster and more efficiently--which is important in terms of his own behind-the-stove food journey. This keen ability to listen, observe, and recount is precisely what makes Fishman such a talented author and Savage Feast . . . such a fascinating read.
If I might be afforded one quibble, it's that the last parts of the book where Fishman reaches an understanding of the many disparate threads felt a bit rushed. It was probably perfectly proportioned in terms of the number of years of his life afforded it in relation to everything else shared in the preceding pages, but it all seemed to resolve a bit quickly given the complexity of all that preceded it.
That point aside, if Goodreads allowed half-stars, I'd be pleased to rate this at 4 1/2 stars.
The book delivers on the topics advertised in its title and, best yet, it goes a bit beyond in so far as it also delves into the author's career path, his mental health journey, emotional unavailability and self-sabotage in the relationship department, and great love of his in turns loving, demanding, challenging, perplexing, frustrating, and infinitely human immediate family (including his parents, maternal grandparents, and later in the story his grandfather's caregiver, Oksana). As an anthropologist and third-generation American born of immigrants from countries quite different from Fishman's Belarus origins (with benefit of a spouse of second-generation cultural and religious Jewish and eastern European origins), what I found most interesting and immediately relatable were the role that food, meals, inter-generational expectations, squabbles, and the admittedly arbitrary but nonetheless inescapable roles one is assigned relatively early in life within the larger family drama and how deftly these were developed and interwoven here. Even if you don't want to prepare any of the recipes contained in the book, please do read them as they are every bit as much a part of the text and contain their own insights and observations as does the surrounding narrative.
What I will carry forward is juxtaposing the author's description of a vacation he took at age six with his extended family to the "Soviet Riviera" of Crimea. There, despite his grandfather Arkady's highly effective ability to grease wheels in order to maximize life's opportunities and gain access to deficit food items, six-year old Boris noted that his family was never able to access the "sanatorium" whose politically-connected guests gorged themselves on coveted foodstuffs in what he characterized as "savage leisure." Juxtaposing this account against the memoir's title of Savage Feast gives the reader something to ponder long after they've turned the last page.
At one point, the author notes that in usage his native language does not tackle criticism head-on and, instead, one must learn to listen to what is not being said. It's a point he sidles up to in several places, perhaps most adroitly when telling the story of wanting to help Oksana in her cramped apartment kitchen in regional Ukraine (Ivano-Frankovsk, for those keeping score) when he realizes she is cooking in the middle of the night in preparation for a large family gathering. She keeps asking him if he wouldn't like to have something to eat and return to sleep, and it slowly dawns on him that his inexpert "assistance" is perhaps only slowing her down. Instead of surrendering his workspace, he decides to chop faster and more efficiently--which is important in terms of his own behind-the-stove food journey. This keen ability to listen, observe, and recount is precisely what makes Fishman such a talented author and Savage Feast . . . such a fascinating read.
If I might be afforded one quibble, it's that the last parts of the book where Fishman reaches an understanding of the many disparate threads felt a bit rushed. It was probably perfectly proportioned in terms of the number of years of his life afforded it in relation to everything else shared in the preceding pages, but it all seemed to resolve a bit quickly given the complexity of all that preceded it.
That point aside, if Goodreads allowed half-stars, I'd be pleased to rate this at 4 1/2 stars.
April 22, 2019
This utterly vivid memoir begins with Fishman's protestations of hunger, and it carries his reader through portraits of his larger-than-life family: his grandfather Arkady, a charming man used to hustling to survive; the Ukrainian woman Okshana who comes to care and cook for him; Fishman's cautious parents and their sometimes strangling love; Fishman's own alternation between passionate attachment and recoil. Fishman describes the difficulty of coming into adulthood, not only as a Russian immigrant who feels caught between the Soviet past and the American present, but as an only child who loves his parents dearly and yet feels the pressure and pull of their tremendous cautious, their desire to protect him and keep him close. There's a sequence where he brings them all to Miami, longing for a sunny vacation where everyone could feel joyful and free, and then once he gets there, he feels perpetually irritated, both with the hospitality that doesn't satisfy them and also with them for their constant penny-pinching and fault-finding. He also describes his love life, his obsession with impossible women and their distance from his family life, which is also all-consuming. After sinking into depression, Fishman finds recovery in food: farm work and kitchen work in a Russian restaurant, of course.
Fishman's sense of humor and his psychological subtlety, his clear-sightedness (without prescriptivism) about himself and his family, make this memoir gripping to read, while his love and his aspiration to create a family himself in the model of his parents' love for one another is very moving. The book is unpredictable, wherein lies its power, and the recipes laced throughout bring an immediacy and a flavor to its contents that this reader found intoxicating.
Fishman's sense of humor and his psychological subtlety, his clear-sightedness (without prescriptivism) about himself and his family, make this memoir gripping to read, while his love and his aspiration to create a family himself in the model of his parents' love for one another is very moving. The book is unpredictable, wherein lies its power, and the recipes laced throughout bring an immediacy and a flavor to its contents that this reader found intoxicating.
April 29, 2020
In recent years, I have had a strong desire to visit a foreign country for not only the once in a lifetime experience but for the opportunity to marvel in all the delicious delicacies that you can't discover in the United States. My top two destinations would be Italy and Spain; Italy for the gorgeous location and Spain for the need to have incredible paella.
Belarus, on the other hand, might not be in my top five or ten but after reading Savage Feast, I was able to explore a country that many people simply overlook as the landlocked country between Poland and Russia. I would describe this story as an around-the-world food adventure that also has a lot of heart.
Boris Fishman, the author, grew up while the country was under Russian control after World War II and brings a grand authenticity to a type of cuisine that is not necessarily a hidden surprise. He describes his journey so exquisitely and with vivid details that it is a testament to making your personal dreams a reality.
The tagline to this book is Three Generations, Two Continents and a Dinner Table which is imply that food can stretch so wide and far and it can reach so many platforms. The sections that I found to be most delightful are the interactions that Boris had with Oksana, his grandfather's home aide when it came to making family favorites such as borscht (beet soup) and liver pie. It is just one example of how this book opened my eyes and made me fascinated with a part of the food spectrum that needs to be more dissected and appreciated.
Belarus, on the other hand, might not be in my top five or ten but after reading Savage Feast, I was able to explore a country that many people simply overlook as the landlocked country between Poland and Russia. I would describe this story as an around-the-world food adventure that also has a lot of heart.
Boris Fishman, the author, grew up while the country was under Russian control after World War II and brings a grand authenticity to a type of cuisine that is not necessarily a hidden surprise. He describes his journey so exquisitely and with vivid details that it is a testament to making your personal dreams a reality.
The tagline to this book is Three Generations, Two Continents and a Dinner Table which is imply that food can stretch so wide and far and it can reach so many platforms. The sections that I found to be most delightful are the interactions that Boris had with Oksana, his grandfather's home aide when it came to making family favorites such as borscht (beet soup) and liver pie. It is just one example of how this book opened my eyes and made me fascinated with a part of the food spectrum that needs to be more dissected and appreciated.
April 1, 2019
Boris Fishman loves to eat. He wants us to enjoy his dishes, so he provides recipes that he learned from his grandfather's Ukranian home aide when depression claimed him. He knew he loved to eat and finally realized that immersing himself in the art of his old world style of Jewish cooking (including pork) would be a road out. It's complicated. So is his family's immigrant journey from Belarus to NYC. He was nine years old in 1988 when they changed homelands, but he brought along the past, including all of the anxiety and fear his parents and grandparents had instilled in him. He navigated this new world more easily and learned the language more completely (he became a writer!), but he couldn't ever leave home. The recipes are complex. In spite of the encouragement of my daughter-in-law, also a youthful Jewish immigrant from Russia who loves to concoct such multi-step dishes and attended college with the author, I doubt I'll ever prepare one of her friend's recipes. I'm content to eat them at my son and daughter-in-law's home, or her parents', and at the restaurants they select for all of us to visit. I miss my daughter-in-law's grandmother, who passed last year. That soup, which simmered all day, was worth the wait. But, like Boris Fishman's recipes, I'm never going to make it myself.
August 8, 2022
I only made it ~80 pages through this book. I was really excited when I stumbled upon this in the bookstore because:
A) I LOVE memoirs
B) Dating a Ukrainian immigrant, I have tried a lot of the food he mentions and
C) Found the concept of a book exploring the themes of generational trauma/cooking/assimilation (particularly through an Eastern European lens) really intriguing
However, I really struggled with the murkiness of this book. I found myself re-reading paragraphs frequently trying to figure out which character we were learning about and how they connected back to the author. I think because the book jumps between time periods and gives anecdotes about the same characters asynchronously without any underlying connectedness or reoccurring personality traits, it was hard for me to feel invested in the characters or follow any kind of a comprehensive story.
Full disclosure: I was reading this book at the beach and this is definitely not a “beach read” so maybe I’ll give it another try at some point when I’m a little more focused.
A) I LOVE memoirs
B) Dating a Ukrainian immigrant, I have tried a lot of the food he mentions and
C) Found the concept of a book exploring the themes of generational trauma/cooking/assimilation (particularly through an Eastern European lens) really intriguing
However, I really struggled with the murkiness of this book. I found myself re-reading paragraphs frequently trying to figure out which character we were learning about and how they connected back to the author. I think because the book jumps between time periods and gives anecdotes about the same characters asynchronously without any underlying connectedness or reoccurring personality traits, it was hard for me to feel invested in the characters or follow any kind of a comprehensive story.
Full disclosure: I was reading this book at the beach and this is definitely not a “beach read” so maybe I’ll give it another try at some point when I’m a little more focused.
March 12, 2019
My review from the March, 2019 Baltimore Style.
With his extended family, 8-year old Boris Fishman travelled to the United States as an
immigrant from Belarus. In Savage Feast : a Memoir with recipes we get to know Boris and this
extended family, especially his grandfather, who is a character in both definitions of the word.
Grandfather Arkady was a brilliant black marketer and swindler, who kept food on their table in
Minsk, and remained irascible in Brooklyn throughout his old, old age. When Boris and Arkady
grow close to Arkady’s home health aide, Oksana, a Ukrainian immigrant, Boris travels with her
to her home village to get an idea of the old Soviet life. The soul-searching of the immigrant is
powerful throughout - Where do I belong? How do I fit in? Can I go back or must I keep moving
forward? Boris’ narrative sometimes grows tiresome, but Arkady and Oksana always return to
With his extended family, 8-year old Boris Fishman travelled to the United States as an
immigrant from Belarus. In Savage Feast : a Memoir with recipes we get to know Boris and this
extended family, especially his grandfather, who is a character in both definitions of the word.
Grandfather Arkady was a brilliant black marketer and swindler, who kept food on their table in
Minsk, and remained irascible in Brooklyn throughout his old, old age. When Boris and Arkady
grow close to Arkady’s home health aide, Oksana, a Ukrainian immigrant, Boris travels with her
to her home village to get an idea of the old Soviet life. The soul-searching of the immigrant is
powerful throughout - Where do I belong? How do I fit in? Can I go back or must I keep moving
forward? Boris’ narrative sometimes grows tiresome, but Arkady and Oksana always return to
September 5, 2020
This is an enjoyable food memoir that tells the story of a family who immigrates to New York from Belarus.
The majority of the book tells the story of different generations of this family, how they relate to their homeland, to their new home in America, and to each other, often through food. The very end of the book delves into the author's own depression, struggle with relationships, and therapy, which is administered conventionally as well as through cooking and working on a farm.
He says "Cooking is making something where there was nothing. That something happens to keep you alive...It is the literal opposite of the emptying out of depression. Only something so elemental could do it -- because your emptying is elemental."
I found myself wishing that the last part of the book were longer. Or perhaps developed more in another book. Fishman is foremost a writer, and I look forward to reading more of his work to see if he develops these themes more fully.
The majority of the book tells the story of different generations of this family, how they relate to their homeland, to their new home in America, and to each other, often through food. The very end of the book delves into the author's own depression, struggle with relationships, and therapy, which is administered conventionally as well as through cooking and working on a farm.
He says "Cooking is making something where there was nothing. That something happens to keep you alive...It is the literal opposite of the emptying out of depression. Only something so elemental could do it -- because your emptying is elemental."
I found myself wishing that the last part of the book were longer. Or perhaps developed more in another book. Fishman is foremost a writer, and I look forward to reading more of his work to see if he develops these themes more fully.
May 27, 2025
There's an at-times solemn, at-times playful, always easy rhythm to Fishman's reminisces. He wants readers to know everything he can possibly tell them about his and his family members' lives, but he wants to take his time in getting there, such as when he and his family stop in Vienna on their way to Rome after leaving the Soviet Union, and his father discovers a supermarket for the first time. He's agog at how much food there is, surprised by the automatic doors at the entrance, and amazed that there are plastic bags instead of the string bags used in the Soviet Union. This theme goes on as the family struggles to adjust to life in the United States, the struggle then threading its way through Fishman's life. He feels disoriented as he tries to find his own footing.
-Rory L. Aronsky
Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...
-Rory L. Aronsky
Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...
June 14, 2019
Some immigrants who came to the United States as children feel torn between two cultures. This seems to be especially true for Russian Jews. Are they American or Russian? Defining their own identity seems extremely difficult, at least according to works they publish. Two recent explorations of this problem can be found in Boris Fishman’s nonfiction “Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table (A Memoir with Recipes)” (Harper) and Maria Kuznetsova’s novel “Oksana, Behave!” (Spiegel and Grau).
Read the rest of my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...
Read the rest of my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...
August 9, 2020
This is a memoir of an immigrant family so of course there is food. Coming together in this strange new world, the old family recipes contribute the warmth needed to survive. Food is emotional sustenance. Boris Fishman came to this country from Belarus at age 7. Because his parents and grandparents had a hard time learning English, he became an adult at an early age, translating and guiding his family through the American way. The scars from the old country are evident. Although my immigrant family story is very different, I found myself understanding and loving these crazy people and their difficult relationships. At times I wondered whether the author shared a bit too much.
March 10, 2023
I’ll be kind and give this 3 stars but boy it’s weird. There were so many times I stopped and thought what the hell is he saying?? not just phrases and words I didn’t know but I just didn’t understand what he was talking about some of the time. I think he was trying to be too literary. And there were many times I thought - but he’s just making this up! Scenes and dialogue that he could not possibly have known. Really not my thing. I read most of it and then I just flicked through the last hundred pages. And why does he make his family out to be so horrible? And what’s with all the humble-bragging stuff? Why make yourself out to be so horrible?!
July 6, 2023
While I struggled with the author's writing style throughout, I still found this a fascinating look into the post-Soviet generation and Eastern European immigrant experience in America. Of course I'm always going to love a book with recipes scattered throughout the story. I found the main character hard to connect with as he seemed very self-absorbed. However, I still found his narration of his immigrant experience and his family members' experiences of connection and disconnection very interesting and worthwhile reading. I'm always going to be interested in books that help you see other people's worlds. I think I found it more valuable because of it's connection to Ivano-Frankivisk.
April 15, 2019
I absolutely love this book. The author's writing is so beautiful as well as thought-provoking that I want to finish it all at once but also want to keep reading it. As an immigrant myself, I feel connected in a lot of parts that mentioned by the author. For his family, food brings all of them together. The lady who took care of his grandfather is the key of the family, I feel. The chapter that the author and the lady went back to hometown is the most impressive. Great read!
September 4, 2019
I must admit to sliding through some parts of the memoir---Boris' love life for example. But, even though his family story has absolutely nothing in common with mine, this was a really interesting read about life under Soviets and immigration ("fitting in"). And the recipes!!!
Well worth reading. The description of the trip for everyone he arranges for 3 days in Miami is worth the entire price of the book.
Well worth reading. The description of the trip for everyone he arranges for 3 days in Miami is worth the entire price of the book.
December 19, 2020
I enjoyed this book, I don't really know that much about Belarus or its people and I felt like I was able to experience some of the food through Fishman's family and the recipes he shared. He was very honest about his relationship with his family and later about his struggles with depression. I don't know if I've ever wanted to try Russian/ Soviet food but some actually piqued my interest, and his humorous interjections helped as well.
April 26, 2024
Hard to rate this book because I feel like the beginning about the author's family history in Belarus, and escaping the USSR are really, really good, but the later sections that transition into straight memoir about the author's own life are weaker. The concept of a memoir centered around food is great, though, and the food writing itself is good even if almost none of the recipes sounded good to me lol (I'm a picky eater).
May 8, 2019
At first, the way it is written was a little confusing, but still good. It continued to get better and more poetic by the end of it. It is a really good read! I have never read anything, fiction or nonfiction, about people from the USSR. Although I will probably never make any of the recipes, it gave me a new insight into immigrants from that part of the world.
June 18, 2019
This memoir is written beautifully with great humor and pathos. The author writes about his personal history in both Russia and Brooklyn, NY. The focus is on his grandparents and the life they had to lead to get along in a country of great anti-semitism. The author recounts his trials and tribulations after he comes to the US at age 9 and his bouts with debilitating depression.
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