When I first read the description of this book, it reminded me of the marvelous movie "Ladies in Black" (2018). In the movie, Australian teenager Lisa wants to go to university in 1959, but her father believes women should do no such thing. Margaret Ann Spence spends a lot of time in this memoir discussing the limited opportunities for women in Australia, before and after the 1950s. Most interesting was her mother's life and how she returned to school after raising children, receiving no support from her husband, as well as facing discrimination from professors.

Her mother's life is only part of the story, however. This memoir covers all sorts of topics about life in Australia. It's a more painless way of learning history than reading a dry history book, yet it wasn't written in a totally captivating way. I had a very hard time getting into it at first. Nevertheless, once the author focused more on her generation and her parents' generation, the reading became more interesting. By the end of the book, I realized I had been pretty much totally ignorant about Australian history, but could now have a reasonably intelligent conversation about the country.

Anyone lucky enough to have good grandparents has heard their stories: what life was like back in "their" day, the differences between modern times and then, and an endless cast of characters who are familiar by name though time has prevented the generations from meeting.

"Cold War in a Hot Kitchen" is the written version of this. It's the kind of book that would be fun to come across, perhaps in a prominent position on a bookshelf, if this recorded my family's history. It might resonate just based on the location, since proximity can yield similar histories.

Having neither familial nor regional ties to the story resulted in moments of confusion for me. Many friends and family's names popped up; I would have been able to keep up or make connections to other people and events if this was about my family. It's not, so I simply couldn't feel the connections or significance.

Again, this would be a nice story for people with connections to people, places, and events. It simply wasn't for me.

Wow! I just finished the greatest memoir. Cold War in a Hog Kitchen was such an amazing story! I loved it!