From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

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All along the way she reflects on her and Saro's romance – an incredible love story that leaps off the pages.

My heart is full, and aching with how real the fragility of life is, and how we should cherish every moment with our spouses and loved ones. There was no one with whom we could compare ourselves, no one to whom we could turn to for the ins and outs of long-distance, bicultural, bilingual, biracial love. The idea that Saro had suggested, that a pairing could yield something great and lasting, was beautiful but untested.It sounded equally distorted and hopelessly Anglo, but she seemed comforted that at least she was speaking a foreign language. Acqua al 2 was packed that night, people milling outside the front door, braving the cold and hoping for a table. From the famous Tennyson poem: “Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all,” I thought of this famous quote several times while reading, and I think Saro and Tembi’s love story is one for the ages. We learn almost nothing about the years of her marriage, the life or death of her father in law, their life after their daughter joined the family, or anything else that isn't about the author, the author's feelings, how inconvenienced the author was by having to care for other people, and how upset the author was by being widowed because somehow she never seemed to notice it had ever happened to anyone else. Just the thought made me want to get onto my bike and head back to my tiny new apartment in Piazza del Carmine.

From my place at center stage, I could see Saro moving like a wizard behind a scrim of sizzling heat, orchestrating the clamorous clanging of pots; setting the pace and unfurling magic onto plates from Acqua al 2’s narrow, searingly hot kitchen. Locke’s raw and heartfelt memoir will uplift readers suffering from the loss of their own loved ones. I did shed a few tears along the way, but I wasn’t as greatly impacted by the story as I had anticipated. The couple had to fight for their love as the chef’s traditional Sicilian family did not approve of him marrying a black American woman actress. After one late-night romp in his bedroom on the top floor of his frat house, I helped him clean up beer cups while he helped me decide to take a semester abroad in Italy.

Yet I wanted it so badly that I had to stop from screaming right there on the sidewalk and waking the residents above.

TL;DR: A stunning memoir which blends food writing, grief exploration, cross-cultural relationships, and a beautiful love story. In the process, she threw her fringed leather purse into the back seat, then, on second thought, reached back, put it onto her lap, and pulled out a joint. We want our loved ones to always be with us, and no matter how old we are, it always seems incomprehensible and unbearable when it comes time to have to say goodbye. Booths wrapped the circumference of the intimate candlelit dining room filled with communal butcher-block tables.

I intimately know grief and I’ve read other books that fully embrace the experience and strongly echoed my experience. Our cheeks made a little suction sound when he pulled away, an audible marker that we had indeed touched. Hearing her story through her own voice made this book more impactful for me and I am glad I listened to it rather than read it. In the memoir, Tembi tracks three summers spent in Sicily after Saro’s death (incluidng one summer with her whole entire family, like in the show).

I enjoyed that these were spread out and given time to develop; somehow the juxtaposition of chapters about grief and chapters about love just made sense. But it was learning about her in the fourth grade that made me first understand what it meant to be exiled. As an expat, I particularly appreciated the exploration of what it’s like to live between countries and cultures; Locke does a wonderful job of presenting the extreme differences between L. And I wanted to be able to know that I could see unspeakable pain and know that it, too, would change me but not undo me.I tumbled out onto Via dell’Acqua just after midnight, hypnotized by his skin, his food, how his hand had met the small of my back when we had said good-bye. Please note: I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review which I have provided here. How could I have been so stupid as to have a one-night stand on a tiny island during the off-season, where the only departing ferry left once every five days? I began to gather from the exchange he and Sloane were having that he was leaving work at Acqua al 2, a well-known restaurant popular with locals and tourists less than a block away.