Publishers Weekly
06/03/2024
Milholland examines her love of communal living in this colorful debut. Milholland’s childhood home in Portland, Ore.—nicknamed “the Holman House” after the street where it sat—felt like it belonged not only to her and her unmarried parents, but to the exchange students, travelers, researchers, and poets the family hosted. At Amherst College, Milholland sought similar community, regularly cooking vegetarian meals for 20 people in her dorm’s communal kitchen, though she noticed early on that her peers “didn’t have a shared commitment to one another or the place.” While studying in Japan in her early 20s, Milholland traded a host family who let her live quietly on the top floor of their home for one that cooked and ate together, discussing their meals and teaching her Japanese in the process. After college, Milholland longed for the comforts of the Holman House, so she returned to Portland and lived there with her brother. Even as the Great Recession and Covid-19 tested the siblings’ commitment to group living, they hosted a Thai cook, a hippie couple, a mushroom forager, and others. Supplementing the narrative with recipes sourced from friends and former roommates, Milholland paints an inviting portrait of life lived in the company of others. Readers will walk away feeling nourished. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
Reading this book is like finding a friend. With intelligence and humor, Lola Milholland invites us to join her in a timely (and delicious!) interrogation of the ethics of food, housing, family, land, and self. As an affirmation and celebration of our deep and radical connections with the world and each other, her book gives me hope.”—Ruth Ozeki, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Form and Emptiness
“This is an intimate and captivating interrogation of home as told from the communal kitchens of Lola Milholland’s most uncommon upbringing. Each episode and every recipe is a delicious study in grace with an immense love for the messy everything of life.”—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders
“In the tradition of genre-bending food writing that includes Ruth Reichl and James Beard, this debut memoir . . . pushes past the presumed confines of what a food-centered book can do, morphing into a cultural critique championing a community-centered approach to living, peppered with recipes.”—Portland Monthly
“Endearing . . . Clear eye[d] . . . [Milholland] reflects with humor and affection on growing up and making a life in the counterculture of Portland, Oregon.”—Kirkus
“Milholland paints an inviting portrait of life lived in the company of others. Readers will walk away feeling nourished.”—Publishers Weekly
“This thought-provoking memoir will resonate with those seeking solutions to the current loneliness epidemic, or for those challenging notions of what it means to live as an independent adult. Ultimately, it is an inspirational read about someone who consciously chooses to live according to her own values, without ignoring the work it takes to move through discomfort as it arises.”—Booklist
“Part memoir, part cookbook, and all heart, Group Living and Other Recipes is a feast for the mind, body, and soul. Readers will love how Lola Milholland deftly explores the intersection of food and life through savory recipes, the compelling stories behind them, and her fascinating path to creating community. It is a book that you will devour whole.”—Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game
“Surprising, enlivening, and nourishing, Lola Milholland’s debut offers an engaging look at communal life up close. In doing so, it helped me to recognize the ways in which my own life is made possible by the work of so many others. (Plus Lola’s recipes are fantastic.) By this I mean that Group Living and Other Recipes helped me to care for the people I hold dear—what a tremendous gift!”—Elizabeth Rush, author of The Quickening
“In this boisterous and original book, populated by lovable characters, Lola Milholland blends memoir, food writing, and revealing discussions of everything from housing equity to Filipino American identity to activism around denuclearization. The recipes are just as free-ranging and wonderful. A compelling, eye-opening read.”—Anya Von Bremzen, author of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking
Kirkus Reviews
2024-05-17
A food-business owner reflects with humor and affection on growing up and making a life in the counterculture of Portland, Oregon.
In her first book, Milholland reflects on the many years she has spent living in the family home, the Holman House: first with her parents and older brother and an assortment of other temporary residents, including a series of exchange students, and now with her “sweetheart” Corey, her brother Zak, and a rotating cast of friends, most of them involved in the stop-motion animation industry or visual arts. “Why was group living considered so uncouth? It seemed very practical,” she muses. To the author’s credit, she isn’t too starry-eyed to ignore the economic implications of group living. She makes it clear that as much as she enjoys communal suppers and the chance to hang out with her friends and relatives nearly every day, part of their motivation for sticking together is that in an expensive housing market like Portland, they wouldn't be able to afford living on their own. Milholland applies the same clear eye to the land trust in Wisconsin, where her mother now lives, and the community where her aunt and uncle, committed Quakers and pacifist protestors, live, in which members reside in their own homes while coming together in a meetinghouse for frequent meals and get-togethers. Starting with idealistic aspirations, the community has now “become an exclusive retirement community for well-to-do hippies.” As the title suggests, the book includes recipes assembled from the cooking projects of those the author loves. Most of these are on the challenging side, involving ingredients like galangal, makrut lime leaves, and maitake mushrooms, and laced with warnings such as, “Burned chilies will create tear gas in your kitchen, so be watchful.”
An endearingly rambling look at a mildly alternative lifestyle.
