“I started crying on page one; a few pages later I burst into laughter. This beautifully written book takes readers on an emotional journey that is both heartbreaking and hopeful.”—Ruth Reichl, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Novel
Join us on March 26th at the MHM for an in-person book talk at 7 pm EST with Bonny Reichert, the author of How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty. Bonny will be in conversation with Ivy Lerner-Frank, a Montréal-based writer focused on food, books, and people.
When you’re raised by someone who once survived on potato peels and coffee grounds, you develop a pretty healthy respect for food.
- Discussion in English
- In-person at the Montreal Holocaust Museum
- March 26 at 7 pm
- $5 Tickets can be booked in advance
Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head on.
Then a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish.
How to Share an Egg is a journey of deep flavors and surprising contrasts. Sharing the moments that are sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, this is one woman’s search to find her voice as a writer, chef, mother and daughter. Do the tiny dramas of her own life matter in comparison to everything her father has seen and done? This moving exploration of heritage, inheritance, and self-discovery sets out to find the answer.
Tickets are $5 and reservations are required through Jlive.
This event is being run in partnership with The Wandering Chew and Appetite by Random House.
Learn more about our speakers:
Bonny Reichert is a National Magazine Award-winning journalist. She has been an editor at Today’s Parent and Chatelaine, and a columnist and regular contributor to The Globe and Mail. When she turned forty, she had a now-or-never feeling in her bones and quit her job to enroll in culinary school. After that, she began to explore her relationship with food on the page, seeing her childhood in the restaurant business and her background as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor in a new light. Bonny was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and lives in Toronto with her husband and little dog, Bruno. Her three almost-adult children come and go. She holds a Master of Fine Art in creative nonfiction and teaches writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. How to Share an Egg is her first book.
Former Canadian diplomat Ivy Lerner-Frank is a Montréal-based writer focused on food, books, and people with bylines in the Washington Post, Montreal Gazette, The Globe and Mail, Broadview, Canada’s 100 Best, enRoute, Beijing Scene and Montreal Eater (RIP), The Nosher and The Main. Ivy has called Beijing, Bangalore, Delhi, Hong Kong and Manila home, but loves Montreal the best. She is the books editor for the Culinary Historians of Canada, has been longlisted for several Canadian literary awards, and is actively involved in international eating research.
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