cover image Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess

Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess

Gael Greene. Warner Adult, $24.98 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-59483-207-9

Greene almost turned down New York magazine's request to be its weekly food critic in 1968, but decided that free meals at the city's top restaurants would be wonderful. Turns out it was. She has reviewed and reveled in the city's eateries, offering her often spicy commentary on the best and worst of them. As her spicy life shares the spotlight with the food, listeners can savor good food and good sex, foreplay and fork-play in her remembrances of what she's done (and eaten) with whom. Nancy Travis's reading is a nice concoction of humor, sarcasm, pathos, New York edge and French pronunciation. Greene herself speaks at beginning and end, providing listeners with a lovely appetizer and dessert. There's much to learn about food, food writers, restaurateurs, sex and New York City's love affair with all of it through the last nearly 40 years.