Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home | A Memoir
Written by Kim Sunée
Narrated by Justine Eyre
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Kim Sunée was three years old when her mother took her to a crowded marketplace and left her on a bench with only a fistful of food. Three terrifying days and nights later a policeman discovered Kim, who was clutching what was now only a handful of crumbs.
Nearly twenty years later, Kim's life is unrecognizable. Adopted by a family in New Orleans, she grows up as one of only two Asian children in her community. At the age of twenty-two, she becomes involved with a famous French businessman, and finds herself living in France, mistress over his houses in Provence and Paris, and stepmother to his eight-year-old daughter.
But despite this glamorous lifestyle, Kim never really feels at home. Trail of Crumbs follows Kim as she cooks her way into many makeshift homes and discovers that familiar flavors are the antidote to a lifetime of wandering. Ultimately, it is in food and cooking that Kim finds solace and a sense of place. Sensuous, intense, and intimate, this powerful memoir will appeal to anyone who is passionate about love, food, travel, or the ultimate search for self.
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Reviews for Trail of Crumbs
79 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I loved this book. I was so amazed by the author's life. I couldn't quite understand why she stayed with the super rich guy. I loved when she took the trip to Korea.
I read this book a few times(I just kept reading it and rereading it).
I read this book way before EPL.
I hope the author has found what she was looking for. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I didn't love this as much as I thought I would, but it was very highly recommended and doubtless would have been difficult to live up to. Good read though, and I will definately watch for more of her stuff. Stopped reading when I read the recipe for couscous salad and made it immediately, very tasty!
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I wanted to like this book. As a food lover and an adopted mother of three girls from Vietnam, it sounded like the perfect book. But perhaps because I am both of those things, I was very disappointed in this book. I found the author's constant whining and complaining annoying. She was very disrespectful of her adoptive mother and I cringe to think of her adoptive mother ever reading this book. I understand that being abandoned by your biological mother would cause deep emotional scars. Yet, she was adopted, given opportunities that most people could only dream of receiving and all she does is complain. She is adopted by an American family and grows up in New Orleans. She then becomes involved with a very wealthy French businessman and ends up living with in him France. There she is the mistress of his estates in Provence and Paris. The best parts of the book are the recipes and the cooking. When she is writing about food, all the whining stops. Apparently food is the only thing that she is not disappointed with.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book was beautifully written! It led you through Kim's life - most of it centered in her 20's after she had moved out of the United States. It showed such a deep yearning to try to understand where she fit in, where she belonged, that you just wanted to reach into the book and take her in your arms to let her know that it would all be okay. By being "lost" by her mom, she grew up always searching, never quite feeling "at home."I interpreted the title "Trail of Crumbs" to be a metaphor for two things. First, she used to have a dream about her and her brother as Hansel and Gretel, just waiting for the moon to come out so they could see the trail of crumbs - only to find out that they had been eaten by the birds. Secondly, how she seemed to feel most comfortable in the kitchen, regardless of where she was, cooking wonderful dishes for friends. So as she traveled, she left her own 'trail of crumbs'. Her book is doctored with tales of wonderful foods in exotic (to me) places. At the ends of many of the chapters are recipes of what sound like delicious dishes. I hope someday to have the courage to try some of them. (There is an index in the back of the book listing these recipes.)You must read Kim's story of loss and loneliness as she loved, in her way, Olivier, but could not come to accept the life he created for her."Somehow, I thought, he'll never realize that the everything he wants to give me will never take away the nothing that I've always had." (p66)Join her as she searches for acceptance and family and discovers a strength to let go of what cannot be changed and move forward.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trail of Crumbs is well-written and full of descriptive, savory food writing, which is probably the book's strong point. The majority of the book, though, is about the author, who was adopted at three years old, and her search for an identity and true sense of home. Centered mainly around her relationship with an older French business man, Sunee chronicles - a bit tediously at times - their history, breakup, and fragile reconciliation. At times it's hard not to get annoyed with the author, but then again she's only in her early 20's in the book, hardly the age when wisdom is present in anyone that age. Overall, a very good read, recommended for anyone interested in food and or travel writing, difficult relationships, or the search for self.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fans of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love will enjoy this memoir. Trail of Crumbs recounts the tumultuous years in Kim Sunee's life during which she was living in the South of France and in Paris with the love of her life, Olivier, the founder of L'Occitane. As charmed as her existence is, Kim still feels like something is missing. She doesn't know whether to attribute this feeling to her having been abandoned on the streets of Korea by her birth mother when she was three (she was later adopted by a New Orleans couple), to her rootless young adult life spent traversing the globe, or to something else completely unexplainable. Whatever it is, Kim knows that she must abandon her secure existence with Olivier and set off on her own. Trail of Crumbs takes the reader along with Kim as she grows up and discovers her true self. Along the way we, the reader, are treated to the recipes of Kim's favorite dishes. These dishes and all things culinary in general have been the one constant in Kim's life, the one thing she could always count on to nourish her soul.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5An interesting story that doesn't quite live up to its promise. Sunee has had a fascinating and well-traveled life, and clearly has a passion and a gift for cooking... her writing, a little too un-something for me. Unpolished maybe? Certainly worth reading, if you can get past the pretension in the writing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Born in South Korea, Sunee is abandoned (presumably) by her mother at the age of three and adopted by an American couple living in New Orleans. Her memoir focuses on her time in Europe as a young woman mainly in Paris and Provence. She falls in and out of love with the founder of L'Occitan. Her love of food shines through and there are numerous wonderful recipes. Her evocation of place is much less defined. More problematic is her feeling of not belonging and a compulsion to always leave. She spends much of her time feeling sorry for herself and one is driven to say get over it and move on. She shows much promise as a writer.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/57/31: One (hyphenated) word for this one: heavy-handed.
8/4: I just didn't care for it. It rubbed me the wrong way, and the author was never able to engender sympathy in me. It reminded me a bit of Eat Pray Love, but something about A Trail of Crumbs was worse. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Trail of Crumbs is a story of Kim’s life from the day she was abandoned by her Korean mother and adopted by American parents at the age of three until the time when she is in her late twenties going back to New Orleans, the town she grew up with, after ten years of living in Europe. It is also a food memoir as hunger and the need to make wonderful food are two of the main forces in Kim’s life (she finishes chapters in the book with one or more recipes of very elaborate and sometimes complicated recipes). The whole memoir is mainly focused on Kim’s life when she enters the world of adulthood and decides to study and live in Europe. She takes us through the cities of Paris, Stockholm and then back to France as she grows more and more apart from her adopted family, especially her mother left in America. Kim finally lands in a place she thinks might be her true home. She moves in with Olivier, a wealthy founder of L’Occitane and tries to take on a role of the mistress of his beautiful house in Provence and a step-mother of Olivier’s eight-year-old daughter, Laure. But even having what most people can only dream of, Kim is still unhappy and still searching for the ‘real’ idea of home she claims she never really did get to grasp.I’ll get right to the bottom of it all and put on the record I did not like Trail of Crumbs. It’s difficult to explain why because it is a memoir and it does deal with real people not some fictitious characters. I hate getting personal in my critique but Ms. Sunee is the main reason I didn’t like the book. Granted, she certainly has a talent for writing. It’s obvious from the first pages to the last. There really isn’t much, if anything that I could frown upon in terms of quality of the book. In that respect, Trail of Crumbs reads like a breeze.However, if I was supposed to feel sorry for Kim I am confused because I didn’t. I did sympathize with her and did feel a lot of her pain initially when reading about how she was left by her mother on the sidewalk with only a piece of bread in her hands. The scared, three-year-old Kim spent three days on that sidewalk waiting for her mom to return. It did break my heart a little, I admit. But then, the whole book turns into a sort of bashing of Kim’s adopted parents, especially her mom, and Kim’s wallowing in how unhappy she is, how she can’t find her true self and how her life is pretty much worthless. Forget about having an opportunity to live and study and then work in not one but two beautiful countries in Europe. Forget that she used this opportunity when she was barely twenty (when most of us peons are stuck doing menial and boring jobs just to get us through college with as little debt as possible). And finally, don’t even pay attention to the fact that at the age of twenty one she captures the heart of a very wealthy man who gives Kim anything she wants, and I mean anything (he even buys her a bookstore just for poetry books, which brings nothing but financial loss)and truly loves her. I guess I did start to dislike Kim because of how selfish she turned out to be and how she would stamp on other people’s lives just because she couldn’t figure hers out. I hope that nowadays Ms. Sunee is able to look at how egocentric she really was in those days of what could have been pure happiness had she made an effort.As far as food goes, the recipes were truly yummy and I would gladly eat the dishes if someone else prepared them for me. I am guilty of hating cooking. You have no idea how many times I have been told by others to start cooking because it had therapeutic qualities. Well, it doesn’t for me. And as delicious as all the dishes talked about in Trail of Crumbs must be, I am still not convinced or encouraged to try any of them.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trail of Crumbs is a memoir by Kim Sunee. At the age of three, Sunee was found abandoned at a Korean marketplace. She was adopted by a family residing in New Orleans. Sunee laters moves to Paris to live with her lover, Olivier Baussan who is founder of L’Occitane. However, this luschious life is not enough to keep Sunee happy. She constantly feels alone. Worse, Olivier becomes more and more controlling, and soon their relationship begins to falter.At first, I really enjoyed this memoir. Living in Europe for over ten years is quite enviable and fun to read about. As I read more and more, I couldn’t understand some of Sunee’s choices. She was constantly unhappy with Olivier, yet I don’t recall her ever confronting him about it. It was as if she was afraid to speak. A relationship like that could not make anyone happy. I know from what I wrote, Trail of Crumbs does not seem to be about food much, and while food is certainly not the main focus, it is there. For example, a recipe is included after every chapter. The recipes were my favorite part of the book.