THE GASTRONOMY OF MARRIAGE

EATING TOGETHER is the story of the year of their engagement as told through the meals that Michelle Maisto sat down to together with her fiancee, R.

This is a story about lasagna and fried rice and tofu tacos and Mexican stew, both the successful bids and the terribly less so. It is a story about the author's first-generation Italian parents; R's first-generation Chinese parents; a vegetarian feminist cooking for a carnivore fiancé who has an aversion to meals that involve using too many bowls; and about having nothing to eat when the cupboard is bare and nothing to eat when it's full. Everyone who has ever moved in with someone can relate to this daily conversation about the evening's meal. Perhaps no question is more revealing of the intricacies within a new relationship than, "What should we do about dinner?" and Maisto captures the nuances of this beautifully.

Maisto stakes her claim as a new food writer to be reckoned with. In this book she adeptly uses the meals she makes with her fiancé to tell the story of their lives. She segues seamlessly from describing the preparation of a meal of cold soba noodles with a cooled sauce of honey, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, chili pepper and lemon juice to their neighborhood's shuffled deck of skinny hipsters, tanned Polish men, slim women in short tennis whites that they pass on their way to play tennis while the noodles cool in the fridge. Maisto earned dual bachelor's degrees from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, where she won a Hertog Fellowship and contributed to a forthcoming biography on Lorraine Hansberry. She lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with her husband, R., who writes for The New York Times, curates urban art exhibitions and occasionally makes dinner.

EATING TOGETHER is a testament to one of the most talented writers to emerge from the Columbia program in some time. Maisto's ability instantly recalls Julie Powell's JULIE & JULIA and Frances Mayes' UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN.