Review by Booklist Review
Growing up in Holman House, Milholland is shaped by her exposure to the diverse worldviews of her biological family and the many others who live with them--including a progressive attitude towards cohabitation and non-traditional views on romantic partnership. Those imbue Milholland with the courage to establish her life on her own terms. The memoir lingers over important figures, with chapters dedicated to her parents, aunts, uncles, host families, and friends, but the central character remains Holman House itself, where the motley crew living there unites over dinners into a blended, non-traditional family. Recipes cap off each chapter, each one a reminder of the unique humans who have shared room and board in Holman House. This thought-provoking memoir will resonate with those seeking solutions to the current loneliness epidemic, or for those challenging notions of what it means to live as an independent adult. Ultimately, it is an inspirational read about someone who consciously chooses to live according to her own values, without ignoring the work it takes to move through discomfort as it arises.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Milholland examines her love of communal living in this colorful debut. Milholland's childhood home in Portland, Ore.--nicknamed "the Holman House" after the street where it sat--felt like it belonged not only to her and her unmarried parents, but to the exchange students, travelers, researchers, and poets the family hosted. At Amherst College, Milholland sought similar community, regularly cooking vegetarian meals for 20 people in her dorm's communal kitchen, though she noticed early on that her peers "didn't have a shared commitment to one another or the place." While studying in Japan in her early 20s, Milholland traded a host family who let her live quietly on the top floor of their home for one that cooked and ate together, discussing their meals and teaching her Japanese in the process. After college, Milholland longed for the comforts of the Holman House, so she returned to Portland and lived there with her brother. Even as the Great Recession and Covid-19 tested the siblings' commitment to group living, they hosted a Thai cook, a hippie couple, a mushroom forager, and others. Supplementing the narrative with recipes sourced from friends and former roommates, Milholland paints an inviting portrait of life lived in the company of others. Readers will walk away feeling nourished. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A food-business owner reflects with humor and affection on growing up and making a life in the counterculture of Portland, Oregon. In her first book, Milholland reflects on the many years she has spent living in the family home, the Holman House: first with her parents and older brother and an assortment of other temporary residents, including a series of exchange students, and now with her "sweetheart" Corey, her brother Zak, and a rotating cast of friends, most of them involved in the stop-motion animation industry or visual arts. "Why was group living considered so uncouth? It seemed very practical," she muses. To the author's credit, she isn't too starry-eyed to ignore the economic implications of group living. She makes it clear that as much as she enjoys communal suppers and the chance to hang out with her friends and relatives nearly every day, part of their motivation for sticking together is that in an expensive housing market like Portland, they wouldn't be able to afford living on their own. Milholland applies the same clear eye to the land trust in Wisconsin, where her mother now lives, and the community where her aunt and uncle, committed Quakers and pacifist protestors, live, in which members reside in their own homes while coming together in a meetinghouse for frequent meals and get-togethers. Starting with idealistic aspirations, the community has now "become an exclusive retirement community for well-to-do hippies." As the title suggests, the book includes recipes assembled from the cooking projects of those the author loves. Most of these are on the challenging side, involving ingredients like galangal, makrut lime leaves, and maitake mushrooms, and laced with warnings such as, "Burned chilies will create tear gas in your kitchen, so be watchful." An endearingly rambling look at a mildly alternative lifestyle. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
