Is there any contract tighter than a family recipe? Alex Witchel poses this question early in All Gone, a memoir of her mother's dementia and her efforts to stem the sorrow of watching her slip away. Witchel, the former author of the "Feed Me" column for the New York Times food section, turned to her mother's recipes for solace, and as she shares her heartbreak and her mother's suffering, she comforts the reader with a cherished recipe at each chapter's end.
Witchel doesn't romanticize her mother or her childhood, describing her cooking efforts as an obligation, not a joy, with Accent seasoning a favorite ingredient and "Del Monte her farmer's market." She was a teacher for 52 years and earned a doctorate after marriage and children, a smart, strong woman whose regular request to her daughter to "tell me everything" inspired Witchel's journalism career.
Witchel examines her role during her mother's illness like the reporter she is, with plentiful "should haves" and "could haves." She includes medical details, family reactions and a generous collection of history, humor and reminiscences to round out our understanding of the family. But it's the meatloaf, the cheese blintzes, the latkes and the three-day chicken soup that cement the memories and the mother-daughter bond.
After the last chapter, Witchel shares a chicken recipe that means to her family what her mother's meat loaf represents to her, and we know her mother's spirit lives on. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller