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The Book of Difficult Fruit by Kate Lebo
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The Book of Difficult Fruit

Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly (with recipes)

$26.24

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Tanya Eby
Length 7 hours 50 minutes
Language English
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A is for Aronia, berry member of the apple family, clothes-stainer, superfruit with reputed healing power. D is for Durian, endowed with a dramatic rind and a shifting odor—peaches, old garlic. M is for Medlar, name-checked by Shakespeare for its crude shape, beloved by gardeners for its flowers. Q is for Quince, which, fresh, gives off the scent of "roses and citrus and rich women's perfume" but if eaten raw is so astringent it wicks the juice from one's mouth.

In this work of unique invention, these and other difficult fruits serve as the central ingredients of twenty-six lyrical essays that range from deeply personal to botanical, from culinary to medical, from humorous to philosophical. The entries are associative, often poetic, taking unexpected turns and giving sideways insights into life, relationships, self-care, modern medicine, and more. What if the primary way you show love is to bake, but your partner suffers from celiac disease? Why leave in the pits for Willa Cather's Plum Jam? How can we rely on bodies as fragile as the fruits that nourish them?

Lebo's unquenchable curiosity leads us to intimate, sensuous, enlightening contemplations. The Book of Difficult Fruit is the very best of food writing: graceful, surprising, and ecstatic.

Kate Lebo is the author of the cookbook Pie School and the poetry chapbook Seven Prayers to Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and coeditor with Samuel Ligon of Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and Booze. Her essay about listening through hearing loss, "The Loudproof Room," originally published in New England Review, was anthologized in Best American Essays 2015. She lives in Spokane, Washington, where she is an apprenticed cheesemaker to Lora Lea Misterly of Quillisascut Farm.

Tanya Eby is an Audie-nominated and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. AudioFile magazine says, "Listening to Tanya Eby is like listening to a full-cast recording." Tanya has a BA in English language and literature and an MFA in creative writing. Besides narrating, Tanya blogs and works on her own novels. She has published four novels and is at work on her fifth.

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Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

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You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

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Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch