Review: ‘Give a Girl a Knife’

In her memoir, 'Give a Girl a Knife,” Amy Thielen recounts her culinary journey. Or to be more accurate: her culinary journeys.

A native of a small community in northern Minnesota, Thielen first becomes truly enamored of cooking when she and her artist husband, Aaron, move deep into the woods where they can grow much of their own food. Both she and Aaron realize that the next step in their respective careers is to move to New York City.

They both find success in the big city, but the call of their rural, secluded life is too strong to ignore. They begin dividing their time between Minnesota and New York.

Thielen writes vividly. Whether writing about food, the people who cook it, or the places that are important in her life, she draws the reader in with descriptive, sometimes lush, language. Here, after noting how her work invades her dreams, she discusses food from both aspects of her culinary life.

'This is what happens to a cook when she spends so many hours gaping at the contents of the pan before her, waiting for doneness. It's not unlike the way a gardener watches her tomatoes ripen. Both end points mark the moment at which a vegetable contains as much liquid sweetness as it ever will. When perfectly cooked, a wedge of white turnip will drip juices as if its light purple veins run with fat, and its tissue will soften and taste like butter. On the raw side of things, an utterly ripe tomato at the end of August swings low on its vine, opalescent and sun-tanned gold at the shoulders, its voluptuous flesh nearly falling out of its skin.”

Thielen's memoir is a story of opportunities grasped and sacrifices made judiciously, as well as a consideration of how long and under what circumstances a dual life is sustainable. But food, lovingly prepared in locales lofty or humble, is at the heart of 'Give a Girl a Knife.”

BOOK READING

What: Amy Thielen reads from 'Give a Girl a Knife”

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 7

Where: Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City

Cost: Free