im a big girl and I like a big sandwich, ya know what I mean. so I love to see how everyone else feels about eating. we all do it. and we all do it differently but it's so SECRETIVE. read this book and then go eat what you want how you want.

I really enjoyed this memoir. Refreshing, honest and full of heart, Crave follows the ups and downs of Christine O'Brien's life and introduces us to her loving yet complicated parents. A really engaging and interesting memoir, Crave is a great read. 4 stars.

A privileged upbringing with no much to complain about offered up a memoir that basically I already forgot about.

A story ultimately about control, and how it manifests itself among family members, I found this memoir difficult to read, perhaps because of my own food bias and upbringing. Ms. O'Brien sets the scene well, and her descriptions of events are very detailed. The family dynamic is explored and illustrated, however I wished for more thought detail, more emotion. It may be that the only way the story can be related is dispassionately, but that left me wanting more layers, more complexity. I wavered between 3 and 4 stars, but went with 4, as the book is well written, just not what I was anticipating at this time.

Crave by Christine O’Brien is a coming-of-age memoir written by a woman who grew up with a mother who insisted that vegetable juices, yeast flakes and other strange and restrictive “health” foods were the only way to keep her family healthy. The privileged daughter of a film executive, the author had an unusual childhood. She grew up living in the legendary NYC apartment building The Dakota (where Rosemary’s Baby was filmed, Judy Garland once lived and John Lennon was killed) and yet had a relatively down to earth upbringing. Her parents were loving but flawed, especially her mother whose mental instability manifested in her health food obsession. The impacts of this restrictive diet would follow O’Brien into adulthood.

Christine O’Brien’s Crave: A Memoir of Food and Longing is too long for such an interesting story

Christine O’Brien’s memoir Crave tells an intriguing story of growing up with equal parts privilege and deprivation while summing up her mother’s repressed life but besides being waay too long, the unevenness of her memories–some seem overly detailed for their importance while other years are practically skipped over–I found this New York Post review/synopsis about her book to be a more entertaining read: “My beauty queen mom tortured us with her cult diet:” https://nypost.com/2018/11/10/my-moms-bizarre-cult-diet-nearly-killed-her-and-destroyed-our-family/. And I feel bad about it.

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

A gem. Great insight into what it's really like to be a child of Hollywood royalty. But its strength is in the humanity of a child's perspective on it all.

I love memoirs, especially the ones that have to deal with people’s relationship with food.

This one was so well-written and it completely sucked me in.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for providing me with a free copy of this book.

This book was informative and entertaining, but a tad self-indulgent and slow. The author has guts and makes herself vulnerable to the reader but there are times where she “plays it safe”. I wish she hadn’t. Overall this book can speak to all of us, even without one having the author’s privilege... although I can’t say the empathy always comes easily.

When I started Crave by Christine O’Brien, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I was sent an advanced copy a few months back but pushed it back on my reading schedule to closer to the release date. As a result, I didn’t remember the blurb or synopsis. I kind of went into it blindly but I’m honestly glad that it worked out that way. Crave tells the story of Christine O’Brien, her mother’s health challenges & the subsequent impact on the family. It is a textbook example of how money doesn’t necessarily fix everything. The Dr. House in me was immediately drawn in trying to diagnose through the juxtaposed memories of Christine’s own child & her mother’s. The Mom In me was praying for the wisdom & insight not to inflict so much of myself - no matter what I might go through - on the lives of my children. Overall, it was an interesting read.

Crave by Christine S. O’Brisen. I found it sad that there were women in the world that subjected their children to eat like hers did. I found myself glad and very appreciative that as a child I had decent home cooked food. The saddest part of the whole story was they had the money to eat food of at least the average person. I am not a person to survive on health food stores. I do eat healthy no salt added to my food and love salads and soups and chili. And I do search labels to see how much salt or sugar is in them.

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir! I found it to move quickly and overall thought it was hard to put down, which is always a plus. I wanted to know more about Christine's life growing up in a wealthy household headed by two parents with strikingly different personalities. It's an intriguing look into an outwardly privileged life, but in reality one full of hunger and craving... Feelings you'd think weren't part of a privileged life. I do have one slightly minor complaint about the layout of the book- the author would go from one idea or thought to something seemingly unrelated from one paragraph to the next within a chapter. As the reader following along it felt a little disjointed at times. Otherwise it was an entertaining, worthwhile read that I'd recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review. For some reason, I had assumed that this book would be about the author's eating disorder but that really simplifies what it was about. This is O'Brien's story of years of her mother's trying to control their environment and her children's health through their diet. O'Brien's father was a famous producer and her mother was from a farm in the Midwest -the two fought frequently and their home was a stressful one. O'Brien recounts a childhood spent in the Dakota apartment building, the Bahamas, Long Island, etc while her mother had her and her 3 siblings eating "The Program"-basically liquid salads. To say that this influenced her relationship with her mother, with food and with others into adulthood is an understatement. O'Brien longed for compassion, empathy, control and love. Great story.

Author Christine O’Brien artfully describes a childhood spent somewhere in the figurative space between celebrity and abuse; she is not quite certain herself and leaves her readers unclear as well. Her father was unknown outside of the entertainment industry, yet his work entertained the public widely in the mid and late 20th Century. Her mother was a fragile beauty whose health and insecurities led her towards alternative treatments with such gusto that she lost sight of any balance. O’Brien was the oldest of 4 children caught in the middle of this strange brew, literally starving as her mother put them through her ‘Programs’ for health. The memoir is fascinating but ultimately lacks perspective. O’Brien can’t bring herself to fully assess her parents even as she brings her readers deep inside her story. She is still withholding judgement all these years later, still being the good daughter. I received my copy from the publisher through edelweiss.

This is a fine example of a memoir where you learn that not all is perfect behind closed doors. O'Brien's mother's obsession with food colors everything in her life and that of her daughter. That her father never rebelled against this aspect of their lives is curious but he had his own problems. This can be read as a tale of a woman who was ahead of her time with healthy eats or as one of a woman who created lingering problems for her children. It's well written and thoughtful. While O'Brien never pulls punches, so too she never lobs grenades. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

The book summary promised a good story. And it may still be there. However, I found the writing style difficult to follow. I tried to work through it, but was not able to get to the end of the 1st chapter. Too much information spanning across too many years may have benefitted of headings by decades or something. I wish you luck with the book.

Christine Scherick O'Brien is the daughter of late ABC broadcast executive Ed Scherick, who brought TV shows such as "That Girl!", "Batman" and "Peyton Place" to the screen as well as movies like "The Stepford Wives" and "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three". While a young child in the sixties, Christine was living in the iconic New York building The Dakota (John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived there years later), watching her parents hobnob with the likes of Alan Alda, Charles Grodin and Marlo Thomas. The movie "Rosemary's Baby" starring Mia Farrow was being filmed there at the time. One Halloween her Mom took the kids trick o' treating in the building and they encountered legendary actress Lauren Bacall. a longtime Dakota resident.

Christine was the oldest child and the only daughter, and she had three younger brothers. She was witness to her father's occasional explosive and surly encounters with Mom Carol. Carol grew up on a farm in Missouri where she very nearly died after being pulled under a tractor. But she didn't die, and she took up the bassoon (originally her sister Audrey's instrument) to strengthen her lungs. She also went on to become Miss Missouri, become a pianist and musical prodigy, and the glamorous wife of a successful entertainment executive.

The issue of food becomes a major preoccupation for Mom Carol when she turns to an extreme form of diet, not just for herself but the whole family. She shops at health food stores and spends many hours in the kitchen preparing "blended salads" and smoothie type drinks with fruits and vegetables. The whole family is pressured to adapt to "The Program" of this sparse eating regimen. Three day fasts spent in bed are also occasionally employed. While Christine is constantly hungry (especially for meat), she has to admit that her body looks toned and healthy. As Christine grows into an adult, there are moments when she loses the willpower to adhere to "The Program", and feels extremely guilty about it. For a time in college she even forced herself to vomit after eating so-called forbidden foods.

This is a very interesting book about a privileged family in the entertainment industry in which the mother was a forerunner / pioneer for her time in the health foods industry. However, it also is an honest account from daughter Christine's point of view of the major role food presented in her family, and the ramifications...both good and bad...this had on the lives of everyone involved.

**Review will be published to blog in month-in-review blog post on 01 Nov 2018 at 10:00AM EST**

I was initially intrigued by this memoir because the blurb kicked off with how O’Brien grew up in The Dakota. When I was apartment hunting in NYC, I was considering an apartment across The Dakota. At the time, I didn’t know what The Dakota was, but I noticed the beautiful architecture and my agent explained that The Dakota was a famous landmark with a long history of notable residents, including John Lennon (who was shot there) and Yoko Ono (who still lives there). Since then, I’ve been curious about The Dakota, its history, and the kind of people who can afford to live in a building as exclusive as that. However, the memoir turned out to be different from what I expected, which, I would say, is at no fault with the novel, but at fault with the blurb. What I got from the blurb was that it would be about O’Brien, her family growing up in The Dakota, and O’Brien’s and/or her family’s relationship with food. What I got from the book was O’Brien’s mother’s life story, her relationship with food, and the affect of forcing that relationship upon her family. Besides that, I was hoping for a more personal account. Her parents seemed very eccentric, described like characters rather than people she had personal relationships with. Surprisingly, I looked more forward to the parts about food rather than family, probably because of that disconnect (surprising because I was initially intrigued by reading about a family growing up in The Dakota). Furthermore, the memoir seemed a bit unfocused, which confused the pacing for me. I kept waiting for a revelational moment that I didn’t get (I like this Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2467479121), but that I think could have been reached if the memoir was more focused, perhaps on the food parts, giving it a little more purpose. Overall, I think that if I had a more accurate expectation for the book, I would have had more context for what I was reading and would have better appreciated it. Maybe this mini review can provide you with that expectation.

Crave by Christine S. O'Brien was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Crave was a novel I had real difficulty with. As a mother, I can't imagine anyone treating their child as Christine was treated growing up, especially since her parents were affluent and could afford what they wanted. I couldn't decide as I was reading if the author was being whiney about her remembered circumstances, which made me wonder if things were really as bad as she thought they were. In the end, I couldn't finish reading this book...if things were really this bad, it was too much for me to handle. If they weren't, then she was being an entitled girl who felt she was mistreated. Either way, I didn't finish and don't recommend the book.

Crave is a memoir based around food and the author's life long struggle with it. Reared in a family that had its issues, in the early 70s, Christine's mother put the entire family on a severe dietary regime that impacted how all the children felt and dealt with food for their rest of their lives. I enjoyed the family stories. My main criticism is the jagged, abrupt, rambling organization of the narrative. There is no transition from on paragraph to the next. Transition is nonexistent as the author leaps from topic to topic. It's a major detraction from the book and denotes sloppy editing.