All the Wild Hungers

“Profound … beautiful … Life, yes. But death, or its inevitability, hovers over every page, a wolf at the door of the warm, aromatic kitchen. Anyone who has experienced a family member’s struggle with cancer will be stabbed by recognition throughout this book, as when Babine writes, ‘We don’t ask, how are you doing? anymore—we ask, how is today?’ … In the end, the overriding hunger referred to in this lovely book’s title is the hunger for life. Perhaps it is never stronger than in the shadow of death, and in the light of death’s opposite, love.”

“A lush gem of a book, both heartbreaking and heart-making. Karen Babine’s language is the plush dough she kneads, her observations as elastic as gluten bubbles. By the book’s conclusion you will become a child again, standing on a chair to peer into the pot, not wanting the process of making—of cooking, of understanding, of, as she says, ‘consum[ing] knowing’—to ever end.”

“In this beautiful and haunting book, Karen Babine leads us into the kitchen and cooks healing meals for her mother and herself. With humor and imagination, she names each of her cast iron pots, reclaimed from thrift stores, and simmers the elements of grief and longing, hope and love, with acceptance, insight, and wisdom.”

“In All the Wild Hungers, Karen Babine welcomes us into the small consolations and quiet moments that define a life. These elegant meditations on food, faith, and family ring with absolute truth and clarity.”

“As Karen Babine astutely notes, cancer divides us, sharpens distinctions, isolates, and quarantines. But All the Wild Hungers reunifies (mother and daughter, sufferer and witness, writer and reader) through metaphors of food and family as a private grief is made bearable and shareable in brief, calm, threatening essays about how everyday life must continue amidst uncertainty and pain. The book powerfully and beautifully enacts the stillness we need to survive.”

“Lucid, funny, and jarring … Moving without being maudlin, tautly written without being sparse or barren … It’s hard not to whip through the whole work in one sitting, so propulsive is the book’s pacing and so effective is Babine’s writing.”

“The writing combines Lia Purpura’s lyrical precision and the clear-eyed directness of Roxane Gay… . I admired the anti-velocity of the narrative, its attention to the small moment, its recognition that small moments are often big moments.”