46-2a/large size paperback

With her passion for fine food and, above all, her appetite for love and life, Gael Greene traces her rise from a Velveeta cocoon in the Midwest to powerful critic of New York magazine. Love and food, foreplay and fork play, haute cuisine and social history--all become inextricably linked as the author lifts the lid on her most provocative subject yet--herself. Along the way there are tales of her saucy erotic adventures and intimate portraits of the culinary icons of our time--Julia Child, André Soltner, James Beard, among others--and revealing dissections of New York's legendary "in" spots, including Elaine's, Le Bernardin, Le Cirque, Odeon, and Balthazar.

2007

RRP=$35

rom Publishers Weekly Greene almost turned down New York magazine's request to be its weekly food critic in 1968, but decided that free meals at the city's top restaurants would be wonderful. Turns out it was. She has reviewed and reveled in the city's eateries, offering her often spicy commentary on the best and worst of them. As her spicy life shares the spotlight with the food, listeners can savor good food and good sex, foreplay and fork-play in her remembrances of what she's done (and eaten) with whom. Nancy Travis's reading is a nice concoction of humor, sarcasm, pathos, New York edge and French pronunciation. Greene herself speaks at beginning and end, providing listeners with a lovely appetizer and dessert. There's much to learn about food, food writers, restaurateurs, sex and New York City's love affair with all of it through the last nearly 40 years. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist In this freewheelingly sensuous autobiography, restaurant critic and novelist Greene casts the path of her life as an education of her appetites. Born into an unexceptional postwar midwestern home, Greene knew little about taste. Her hunger for