Trail of Crumbs

Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home - a Memoir

By: Kim Sunee

Narrated by: Justine Eyre

Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Kim Sunée was 3 years old when her mother took her to a crowded marketplace and left her on a bench with only a fistful of food. Three terrifying days and nights later a policeman discovered Kim, who was clutching what was now only a handful of crumbs. Nearly 20 years later, Kim’s life is unrecognizable. Adopted by a family in New Orleans, she grows up as one of only two Asian children in her community. At the age of 22, she becomes involved with a famous French businessman, and finds herself living in France, mistress over his houses in Provence and Paris, and stepmother to his 8-year-old daughter.

But despite this glamorous lifestyle, Kim never really feels at home. Trail of Crumbs follows Kim as she cooks her way into many makeshift homes and discovers that familiar flavors are the antidote to a lifetime of wandering. Ultimately, it is in food and cooking that Kim finds solace and a sense of place.

Sensuous, intense, and intimate, this powerful memoir will appeal to anyone who is passionate about love, food, travel, or the ultimate search for self.

©2007 Kim Sunee (P)2007 Books on Tape

A memoir that Francophile foodies might enjoy...

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A better story with some more real hardships and life lived. Ms. Sunee's writing is certainly good, the problem is that there isn't enough substance in her memoir to give any meat to the narrative. Her youth, relative privilege, and first her comfortable and then her luxurious lifestyle made it difficult to sympathize with her main complaints: a lack of roots (being an abandoned adoptee), a lack of belonging (being an Asian American in Europe), and a lack of accomplishments of her own. It's just hard to feel sorry for or root for someone who bounced from one opportunity to another in Europe and accidentally landed in the arms of a multi-millionaire lover who needed a muse, hostess, and home chef. Sure, her struggles were real and heartfelt, and the descriptions of the meals alongside with the tantalizing recipes kept me reading the book to the end, but I can't recommend it to anyone except maybe struggling writers, Asian American adoptees of white families, underemployed expats or true foodies looking for a cookbook with a bit of a narrative between the recipes.

What could Kim Sunee have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Be a little less self-absorbed.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Slow narration pace matched slow pace of story, yes.

What character would you cut from Trail of Crumbs?

None. And the narrator did a great job with voices of the different people.

Any additional comments?

Someone needs to instruct the reader, Justine Eyre, on Italian pronunciation. Hers was TERRIBLE. We have a first person narrative of a linguist who is a foodie so we need BELIEVABLE pronunciation of all dish names and ingredients. It was PAINFUL listening to Justine say "Parmi GEE ahno Re GEE ahno." Kim Sunee would NEVER have mispronounced that. In Italian, the letter i after a g simply makes the g SOFT, it does not function as a vowel itself. Thus, "parmiJahno" is how you say it. Similarly, is it mas-CAR-pone cheese, not MAR-sca-pone. Ugh!

So boring

I kept waiting for something exciting to happen, but it never did. The author spent WAY too much time describing the character's self doubt and not enough time describing the people she met and places she visited.
I enjoyed the recipes at the end of each chapter.
However, you could cut out 1/2 of this book (while living in Provence) and not miss a thing....