My Year of Meats | Ruth L. Ozeki

My Year of Meats | Ruth L. Ozeki | wholesome and tasty food for thought

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My Year of Meats

	My Year of Meats Ruth L. Ozeki Penguin (Non-Classics), 1999 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 136 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Veteran filmaker Ruth Ozeki's novel has been hailed as "one of the heartiest and yes, meatiest debuts in years" (Glamour). It tells the story of a year in the lives of two ordinary women on opposite ends of the earth, brought together by a convergence of extraordinary circumstances. Jane, a struggling filmmaker in New York, is given her big break--a chance to travel through the U.S. to produce a Japanese television program sponsored by an American meat exporting business. But along the way, she discovers some unsavory truths about love, honor, and a particularly damaging hormone called DES that wreaks havoc with her uterus. Meanwhile, Akiko, a painfully thin Japanese woman struggling with bulimia, is being pressured by her child-craving husband to put some meat on her bones--literally. How Jane's and Akiko's lives intersect taps into some of the deepest concerns of our time--how the past informs the present and how we live and love in an ever-shrinking world.

A cross-cultural, tragi-comic romp through America and Japan that is "wonderfully wild and bracing . . . a feast that leaves you hungry for whatever Ozeki cooks up next" (Newsweek).

"Ozeki masks a deeper purpose with a light tone. . . . A comical-satirical-farcical-epical-tragical-romantical novel." -Jane Smiley, Chicago Tribune Book Review (front page)

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A Sure Thing

There are very few sure things in life, but one of them is "My Year in Meats" by Ruth Ozeki. This story has it all a great protaganist, a mystery to unravel and a fast paced story built around interesting business and societal issues making this book a satisfying read for readers of every shape and size.

A great gift I hit a home run when I gave it to my mother, my wife, a cousin (in her 20's) and my 19 year old daughter.

wholesome and tasty food for thought

This book is funny, sexy, informative, and touching. I resisted reading it for a long time because I thought it was just going to be anti-meat propaganda, filled with info I already knew about, but in reality, it's a great read, regardless of what your feelings about consuming animal-based products may be.

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Excellent story, clever author, spectacular storytelling!!

I have literally swallowed this book whole. I bought it for my book club's february meeting, and couldn't put it down. I've told nearly everyone about this book: my coffee barista, close friends, family, co-workers. Ozeki is a very talented writer, brilliant compilist who knows how to merge all the necessary ingredients to make a complete and wholesome novel. I look forward to reading many more of her works.

I think I want to become a vegetarian

Well written, touching, believable.

It was itneresting to see two women on opposite sides of the globe battle with issues that seem important to everyday life. Adding to that, the plot traverses the US and shows how different women and their values are across the country, and how very different life really is, but how, underneath it all, we're just women.

Certain parts of the book were so descriptive, that I really considered vegetarianism fo a while, if this novel is based on what is really going on in American farms today. Quite disgusting.

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Good, but still a rough draft

What starts off as an exploration of personal identity--about a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian woman who is connected to both cultures through her family and job but feels she belongs to neither--well established in the first chapter, is unfortunately dropped and barely mentioned again. This technique occurs throughout the novel, touching on the meat industry, family values, cultural differences, and sexual discovery, but never explores any of them very deeply. Even the writing itself is often stark, I often had no clear picture of what people or places looked like, and farms, apartments, offices all lacked the details to help me see where I was.

Overall, the novel reads as though the author wasn't sure what she wanted the story to be about (which she admits in the notes section), and just wandered around until she stumbled upon something that felt right. The ending is confident, makes assertions about meat and marriage using the two protagonists, then wraps everything up far too quickly and cleanly. This is fine in the drafting stages, but once the book is finished it really is the author's job to go back and create a unified whole. It's OK that the characters are confused and try to figure things out, but the narrative should be focused and aware. When the characters begin to discuss the perils of eating meat, it reads as someone who has read one book on the subject would speak about it, knowing a lot of chilling facts, but not understanding how it all works or being able to present it with a clear argument. This is not a bad story, I just believe the author should have spent more time with it.

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