BREAKFAST FOR DINNER

Awards & Accolades Our Verdict GET IT by Ryan Staples ‧ RELEASE DATE: today A coming-of-age memoir about divorce and family that balances side-splitting stories with touching reflections. Awards & Accolades Our Verdict GET IT Staples reflects on parenthood, family, and growing up in the 1990s. The book’s opening essay, “Breakfast for Dinner,” sets the tone for the rest of the work with its blend of childhood trauma, comedic storytelling, and poignant reflections. The essay opens with the inaugural family dinner in Staples’ new home. In attendance with his wife and in-laws was the author’s mother, who (with “the calm of an air traffic controller”) told the story of how she deliberately killed her son’s childhood cat. As readers discover after piecing together details from this and a dozen other essays, Staples no longer has a relationship with his mother (“my life is a lot better without her in it,” he asserts). Though he hasn’t spoken to her in years, she plays a central role throughout the book. Born in the 1960s, she’s described as someone who carries “an air of perpetual discontent”; every event “somehow turns into proof of [her] own suffering.” Per the author, this beha...