I love Ina Garten. I found a connection in the shared syllable of our first names, our mutual admiration for chambray shirts, the fact that I too once had recognizable bangs. I appreciate the way he always finds food as happy and that he was always so excited about what he had done that he would eat it in the air.
I love the way Garten pairs a cool kitchen comfort with the warmth of character. I, like most fans, longed for a relationship like hers and Jeffrey. And I didn't grow up with a grandmother, so I figured what I saw in Ina was no different than what other people — the ones with “mommies” to make Christmas cookies — got from theirs.
So when Garten's memoir came out this year, I was excited to read it. Be Prepared When Luck Strikeswhich hit shelves in October, adding depth to Garten's public image. This marked the first time she spoke publicly about the more difficult experiences of her life, such as the troubled childhood she and her brother had with physically and emotionally abusive parents. She revealed that she and Jeffrey briefly separated in the 1970s, when they both had differing views on their roles in their relationship.
The book builds on the couple's often fascinating lore: Garten in distress as a White House nuclear policy analyst; Jeffrey moved from the military to government roles to investment banking. Set all on its new path, Garten made an offer at a specialty food store in the Hamptons, despite having no professional food experience and not even living in New York at the time.
His new chapter got off to a rocky start. On her first busy Memorial Day in business, she ran out of baked goods at Barefoot Contessa. The solution: He sends Jeffrey to buy out the entire local bakery so they can resell their pastries and earn the goodwill of customers for the rest of the season.
In some ways, Be Prepared When Luck Strikes an affirming story of integrating your life into your own timeline. Garten didn't switch to food until age 30, after years of hating every job she had. In other ways, it is redeemable. After growing up with a father who said no one could love him, Garten found himself loved and adored, not only by Jeffrey but also by his dedicated fans. All in all, it's a story of being fed up sometimes to get what you want.
In the course of the book, the couple goes from breaking up in France on their honeymoon – when they follow the $5-a-day budget which was popular among Americans in Europe in the 1970s – to own a multi-story apartment on the Left Bank that took years of renovation to get right. Eventually they agree that the best day of their lives was the day Jeffrey came home to their new, fully furnished apartment in Paris. It's a neat, full-circle story and one that's meant to inspire.
So, why isn't it right for me? Ultimately, Garten was successful because he accepted what came his way. He takes risks, he says yes, he knows about it after the fact. At least this is what he argues: You should, as the title of the book says, just be ready when luck strikes. But this — the basic premise of the book — is where he lost me: Most of the time he says luck, what he really means is money. And in the way he tells his story Garten seems to lack this knowledge.
It's foolish to believe that any “tell all” is the real truth, but that's my problem Be Prepared When Luck Strikes so it feels intellectually dishonest, crediting luck with the majority effect of a comfortable financial cushion and circumstances that make it difficult to fail miserably.
Think again of the apartment in Paris. One day, while Ina is filming her show in the Hamptons, she gets a call from the apartment caretaker: A flooded bathtub in the apartment above them has damaged the Gartens' newly renovated home. “I should have been sad about the injury; that would have been a normal reaction,” Garten wrote. “But, no, what I'm thinking about is real estate. This is maid's room above our living room that I want to buy.”
Instead of the owner covering the damages, the Gartens offered to buy the apartment, allowing them to add a cupola and expand their second floor. Again, Garten emphasized a sense of luck: “This time I know that 'my good stops from my bad,' and it's great!”
This kind of thing happens all the time. When Garten failed to make early payments on his Barefoot Contessa ownership, he told Jeffrey, who asked his bosses at Lehman Brothers if he could put the money into his retirement account if he quit his job. “The answer is yes, but they thought it was crazy to quit for that reason (as I did!) and offered him a loan,” he wrote, comparing it to “something from one of those wonderful story of O. Henry.”
To be fair, Garten doesn't hide the fact of the success he and Jeffrey ultimately achieved, or the impressive set of connections that came with it. This makes the book fun and bubbly. Garten's friend “Jen” is actress Jennifer Garner, while her friend “Rob” is Chicago director Rob Marshall; at a dinner party, Jeffrey casually sits next to Nora Ephron. I imagine that this is what many people come to this book in the first place.
Everyone who reads the book knows money. We read for escapism, but we live in the real world. So why does Garten pretend that money doesn't actually make his decisions possible? He seems to be enveloped in constant resilience, to the point where he loses sight of the fact that most people cannot take this level of financial risk, hoping that luck will come to save them.
This, to be clear, is not a plea for the kind of disclosure culture fostered by the bad faith of online readers: when authors feel they must preface any statement with acknowledgment of all the things they cannot take into account. . What I mean is that we can all learn to narrate the events of our lives. We created the logline, keeping to ourselves the whole story and our feelings about it. This seems to be especially true when one is writing an entire memoir.
However, at best, we know when what we are describing is a little silly. For me, the best memoirs recognize that; they interrogate their own narrative. The dangerous thing is to believe your own stupidity.
Garten does himself a disservice by claiming to be so lucky; What he underestimated was his business acumen and his kindness when needed. Consider another “lucky” moment: Due to a lease dispute, Garten found he had to move his store to a new location. When the space opened across the street, with a landlord who offered him a better lease, he saw the potential for the market of his dreams. But it needed a $150,000 gut renovation and the bank would only give him half.
At that time, Jeffrey was reading Robert Caro's The Power Brokerthe biography of Robert Moses. Knowing that the state doesn't walk away from half-finished projects, Moses “always cuts costs, starts, then comes back and says it's double the cost,” Ina explained. He started with $150,000 worth of work. “…And at the point of no return, I went back to the bank and asked for the remaining money. Smart, if embarrassingly deceptive,” Ina wrote. Of course, it takes a position of privilege to make a decision like this; what if the bank didn't break through?
We see a glimmer of more knowledge in the epilogue. At the Matrix Awards, which recognize women in communications and the arts, Garten gave a speech to other women in media, talking about how lucky she's been at every point in her career. But after returning to her seat on the stage, Oprah, who was sitting next to her, hit her on the arm. “You're out of luck,” he said. “You made your own luck.” Here, Garten realized: “My story is about hard work and good luck.” It still feels a bit flat.
Would I like this book with a different framing? Yes. Give me the gossip and the dirt and tell me all about the expensive houses and famous friends; I know how to see the unattainable as fun. What I struggle with, as a reader, is seeing something the author himself clearly doesn't want to acknowledge, mistaking luck for what the gratifying effect of wealth really is.