Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story

by Dylan Schaffer

Book Overview

When Dylan Schaffer's father, Flip, asked him to take an intensive bread making class at a fancy culinary school in New York, the idea seemed considerably less than half-baked. Dylan hadn't seen much... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1596911921
• ISBN13: 9781596911925
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Funny, poignant book

I could not put this book down which made it hard to get to work and keep my appointments, not to even mention getting sleep. I think I expected something mildly amusing, a respite from the reality of life, but what I found was more real than life (mine, anyway), very very touching and unbelievably funny. Even the acknowledgements were very funny. Sort of an amuse bouche - but at the end. All of you who are reading this review must already know that this is a book about a disfunctional family but what makes it unique is Dylan's compassion, his unbelievable tolerance and a week in a baking class with his very annoying father whom Dylan nonetheless loves. Dylan Schaffer I love you! I finished the book last night. I ordered your other two published books today.

No other book about dying will make you laugh this much

In this, the age of the memoir, there are few as well-written and poignant as this one. The subject -- the author's struggle to connect with and understand his dying father -- is not unfamiliar. But this book stands out, and is exceptional in several important ways. First of all, the writing is suburb. This book was a pleasure to read, and, like a well-crafted novel, it demanded that I keep turning its pages. In many places it is laugh-out-loud funny and in others, heart-breaking. Fans of literary writing will find plenty of interesting sentences -- Schaffer knows how to work with words -- but the writing is never over-wrought, and is accessible and conversational throughout. Secondly, Schaffer's honesty, insightfulness, and self-effacing humor makes him a likable narrator. In this way he reminds me of David Sedaris. From the very beginning of the book, when he fears that he's lost his wife's cat (who loathes him), you'll be laughing with him and feel like he's a friend. Most importantly, the author's father, the iconoclastic Flip Schaffer, is one of the most complex, intelligent, fascinating characters you'll ever see described in print. Despite his foibles, by the end of the book you'll have succumbed to his irresistible, curmudgeonly charm, and you'll wish you'd had a chance to know him yourself. You will also, like the author, lament that he didn't play a bigger part in his son's life. If you're a parent or a child, you'll find something in this book that will touch you, and make you consider your own relationships with those you love. This is more than we can expect from most books. Buy it. You won't regret it.

I laughed, I cried, I couldn't put it down

Even though I'm not a cook by any means, this book about Dylan's journey with his father had me wishing I was right there in the cooking school with them. This author took a wholly unpleasant subject - death - and managed to chronicle it in a way that brought out the best (and the best of the worst) of his father, in the process making me laugh out loud on the subway and shed tears for a man I never knew. I can only hope that, as a writer, I am one day able to tackle such a tough topic with Dylan's extraordinary, no-BS but still tender manner.

very entertaining memoir

I am becoming very impressed with Dylan Schaffer. This is the third book of his I have read; I love his writing and he is very, very funny. In this memoir he is brutally honest while still entertaining and humorous. I highly recommend this book.

Come for the Bailys, Stay for the Story......

Recipe for Male Bonding: take one adult son, a eccentric, charismatic and recalcitrant father who abandoned him decades prior, and a week baking bialys at the French Culinary Institute in New York. The shorthand of this is Tuesdays With Morrie Meets City Slickers Boulangerie, spiced with a small measure of Catcher in the Rye, Grown Up. But it would be wholly unfair to reduce this superb non-fiction book, which reads like the best of can't-it-down family fiction into a few cliches of other works. This is a classic tale but told both better and different. It is finely crafted, flavored with humor, insight, regret, anger and love - all spilling over into each batch of dough. Dylan Schaffer is a criminal lawyer by profession, a writer by calling, and a baker by inspiration. He signs on for a postponed week with Dad - ostensibly to learn to bake and get to know the father who got away, leaving Schaffer in the chaotic care of the parent that stayed. His agenda is as much about trying to make a Phoenix rise out of the ashes of a non-functioning relationship as it is to finally get to ask a man's questions, wired with a teenage boy's hurt and unflinching gaze of judgment and bewilderment. In-between the baguettes, lavosh and best bialy ever, the questions are indeed asked - each rife with a lawyer's hunger for absolute, unembellished truth of their family drama and the hopes of even minimalist forgiveness before the final bread is baked and/or the narrowing window of opportunity closes. Schaffer weaves episodes of past and present effortlessly, deftly fusing the experiences of immediacy (the bakery of the FCI with its own cast or characters) with quick sketches of memory; the ghosts that haunt father and son, albeit with their different perspectives. What could be wrenching is gently and wryly told. In the end, inasmuch as this book is about lost time and a legacy of sadness and abandonment, you cannot help but envy a son who gets to spend one perfectly, imperfect last week with his dad - baking bread, talking life, and finding their way back to love and connection. As a professional baker, I was lured by the baking references and metaphors. As a writer, I stayed for the story - reading it cover to cover while my own batch of best bailys rose.