Everything Is Under Control: A Memoir with Recipes

Slim and sensuous. --Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

Without feeling contrived, the structure frames the writing somewhere between poetry and prose. It serves Grant's candid, spare and rhythmic style. Food may be the throughline that connects her stories, but it is her searing honesty -- around misogynistic kitchen culture, postpartum depression and grief in many guises -- that propels the reader beyond evocations of chocolate souffles and avocado bowls. --Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times

The vignettes in this lean collection are powerful, presented with plenty of white space between chapters, a pause to savor what is told and what is left unsaid . . . Brimming with passion, tragedy and love, this slim volume delights, enlightens and satisfies. --Beth Dooley, San Francisco Chronicle

The power is in the vignettes Grant writes about love and parenting, growing up and settling down, baby food and wedding cake and Vicodin--all of which ring dead-true even though you don't know Grant yourself. You'll steamroll through it. And then you'll start cooking. --Sarah Rense, Esquire

I breezed through [Everything is Under Control] . . . poetic and spare and powerful. --Amanda Kludt, editor-in-chief, Eater

A fast-paced, heart-smacking memoir. --Bon Appétit

Grant's point of view is uniquely sensual and grounding. Think James Salter meets Ruth Reichel meets Marguerite Duras . . . She writes with grace and passion not only about cooking but feasting, family, falling in love and falling apart. She also writes extremely well about healing. When I finished this book, I felt more alive. --Joanna Hershon, New York Magazine's The Strategist

[A] poetic food memoir that is as genuine as a phone call that accidentally lasts hours. In quick vignettes followed by recipes, Grant tells the story of how she went from Juilliard ballerina to pastry assistant to lauded chef, mom, and friend to many. Tear through it, and then tear into that chicken. --Garden & Gun

Relating the adrenaline-surging hustle in restaurant kitchens, including nauseating moments of sexual harassment, Grant writes with bursting energy . . . Grant captures life with her husband and growing babies in similarly spare and gripping images, to enjoyably entrancing effect. --Booklist

"What a beautiful, rich, and poetic memoir this is. Phyllis Grant writes of longing, suffering, celebration, family, and food with such delicate power. Like the best chefs, she knows how to make a masterpiece from a few simple ingredients: truth, taste, poignancy, and love. This is a wonderful book." --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls and Eat, Pray, Love

"Phyllis Grant has the voice of a poet and the sensuality of a cook. This very brave book makes you want to experience the world with equal intensity. As for the recipes ... completely irresistible." --Ruth Reichl, author of Save Me the Plums

"How do we locate ourselves in time? In our families? Within the intricacies of our own appetites? With raw candor and discipline, Phyllis Grant peels back the layers of her innermost experience and gives us a memoir as rich and nuanced, as delicate as life itself." --Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance

"Everything Is Under Control is a beautiful paradox--the book moves expansively, generously across the decades, in prose as clean and economical as a chef's knife dicing an onion. The result is addictively readable and ultimately wise, true, and real." --Claire Dederer, author of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses

Phyllis Grant writes sentences that send jolts through your body. This book is poetry. This book is truth. In structure and tone it's like nothing I have ever encountered. It's about the reality of how we live our lives. I devoured it in a few hours and when I was done, I was crying on the train home. --Jeff Gordinier, author of Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World

"Everything Is Under Control is a captivating memoir for the ages. Phyllis Grant writes with such grace, economy of language, lack of sentimentality, and a narrative tautness that infuses her kaleidoscopic story of sustenance and survival with utter humanity. I couldn't put it down." --Elissa Altman, author of Motherland

"I don't know what's more delicious: Phyllis' recipes or her stunningly beautiful prose. These stories will stick with you long after you're finished reading, but like her fudgey icebox brownies, you will want to devour this book again and again. --Molly Yeh, blogger and Food Network host