Eat Bitter: A Story About Guts, and Food by Lydia Pang is a memoir in which Lydia Pang chronicles her burnout while navigating the difficulties of life.
I wasn't familiar with the author before picking up this book. I was mainly drawn in by the title. I expected a novel with a darker, almost gory tone. Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed and wasn't a fan of the memoir.
The book is divided into eight chapters, with each one beginning with a recipe. However, I struggled to understand what the overall purpose of the book was. At times, it seemed like it was trying to offer self-help advice, but those moments felt buried beneath everything else and were rarely presented clearly or straightforwardly. Instead, I felt like there was a lot of anger and bitterness throughout the memoir, while the sweeter, more hopeful moments never really materialized.
The memoir is also filled with graphic and unpleasant descriptions that I felt were overused. For a book centered around food, some of the recipes seemed incomplete, and several had unnecessarily unappetizing names. Ironically, nothing in this book made me want to eat less than the descriptions and language used throughout it.
Overall, the memoir felt very surface-level. The author touched on several interesting topics but never explored them in much depth. For example, the book mentions the history of Hakka culture, but aside from a few brief references, I didn't feel like I learned much about it or about the author's personal connection to her heritage. In the end, I felt like the book was trying too hard to be profound, but it ultimately fell flat for me.
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