I had high hopes but Hunger Like a Thirst didn’t flow well and was frustrating to read.. It was largely chronological but then she’d throw in some random essays

Her mother left her minor sister with them early in their marriage and her career and then didn’t give them financial support. I would have liked more reflection on this, she seems in contact with their mother later. Why did she let this happen? What was going on there? I don’t see the point of including things like this in a memoir and then not exploring them. We learn little about her family of origin in the book but it felt very dysfunctional (for an unknown reason).

I always appreciate frank talk about money but it was hard to read about her moving to different states, cross country and even from the US to Australia for jobs that not only didn’t pay a living wage but ones what stopped her chef husband from working in restaurants and required a huge amount of time, travel and effort on her part. Then she would go on and on about how they didn’t have money for food at their own house and couldn’t pay the bills.

This is now way for anyone to live but they did have a child. A child who seemed miserable for long chunks of time due to their lack of money and frequent moves. It seemed like a very stressful situation and it kept repeating itself because she kept making the same choices.

She would pay out of pocket for extra meals to write a better review at multiple publications. Why didn’t she push back on this? Why did she accept the crumbs people offered to her and not said she needed more time and more money?

It felt like she constantly thought taking these jobs would lead to something better and she was paying her dues (or it was an excuse to travel) but it went on for decades and she doesn’t seem much better off than when she started.

Which is fine but she didn’t seem happy in her day to day life and the life of her child and husband seemed diminished because of her choice to work for pennies and make massive moves without full time employment waiting for anyone.

I never really felt like I understood why she was choosing to live like this. It’s fine to not want stability or money but it seemed like she did. So why is she making these choices?

She honestly doesn’t come across as that passionate about food which makes her choices even odder. When she wrote about food it was not very evocative or inspiring. She had a bit of a spark when talking about travel and she seemed to relish long trips from home no matter how harrowing the journey. I thought that might have been a better angle for her but I cant imagine travel writing would have provided more stability.