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A Memoir
by Lola Milholland
A spirited and timely exploration of group living that encourages readers to reconsider the meaning of family and home.
Lola Milholland grew up in the nineties, the child of iconoclastic hippies. Both her parents threw open their rambling house in Portland, Oregon, to long-term visitors and unusual guests in need of a place to stay. Years later, after college and after her parents' separation, Milholland returned home. There, she joined her brother and his housemates—an eccentric group of stop-motion animators and accomplished cooks—in furthering the experiment of communal living into a new generation.
Group Living and Other Recipes tells the story of the residents of the Holman House—of transcendent meals and ecstatic parties, of colorful characters coming together in moments of deep tenderness and inevitable irritation, of a shared life that is appealing, humorous, confounding, and, just maybe, utopian—with a wider exploration of group living as a way of life. From spending time at her aunt and uncle's intentional community in Washington State to finding her footing in the kitchen as a student in Japan to mushroom hunting in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, Milholland offers an expansive and vibrant reevaluation of the structures at the very center of our lives.
Thoughtful, quirky, candid, and wise, Group Living and Other Recipes introduces a gifted memoirist and thinker, making a convincing case that "now is always the right time to reimagine home and family."
"Endearing ... Clear eye[d] ... [Milholland] reflects with humor and affection on growing up and making a life in the counterculture of Portland, Oregon." —Kirkus Reviews
"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
"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
"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
"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
This information about Group Living and Other Recipes was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lola Milholland is a food-business owner and writer. A former editor for Edible Portland magazine, she currently lives in Portland, Oregon, and runs Umi Organic, a noodle company with a commitment to providing nutritious public school lunch.
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