The great bulk of How to Cook Your Daughter is a memoir of what it was like growing up during the height of the sexual revolution under the aegis of a sanctimonious bully…The man portrayed here seems less like a world-class monster than a second-rate creep…The implication, in this memoir, is that Jessica would have gone along with the family secret forever, until her father wrote his pious memoir, representing himself as a semi-saint…Jessica came to see, or so she says in this steady, controlled narrative, that her neuroses, her eating disorders, her overwhelming sadness, had sprung from her father's misconduct—not the pathetic sex, but the lying about it…After reading How to Cook Your Daughter, you can only feel stinging pity for father and daughter both.
—The Washington Post
Jessica Hendra's memoir, How to Cook Your Daughter, written with Blake Morrison, a journalist, provides details of her father's behavior and character that she asserts he omitted from Father Joe. But rather than being a systematic refutation of his confessional, it is an exorcism from which the reader emerges shaken and aghast.
— The New York Times
"How to Cook Your Daughter" is the title of an essay written in 1971 by Tony Hendra for the National Lampoon. Like much of the content of that magazine, which Hendra would eventually edit, "How to Cook Your Daughter" pushes the envelope of satire. A distasteful joke carried to an offensive extreme, it describes, in lewd detail, the toothsome flesh of a girl between the ages of five and six and how best to prepare her for consumption. Probably Mr. Hendra didn't intend his essay as a confession of incestuous longings-at least not consciously-but in appropriating his title for her account of the abuse she says she suffered at his hands, his daughter Jessica has managed to extract a measure of poetic justice. Jessica Hendra's response to her father's acclaimed confession of sexual transgression, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul (2004), is a "my turn memoir" like Leaving a Doll's House by Claire Bloom, who set the record straight on Philip Roth, or What Falls Away by Mia Farrow, published on the heels of the Woody Allen and Soon Yi scandal. These he-said-she-said accounts cannot be read fairly, on their own merits, because they are rebuttals rather than independent works. Further complicating the would-be critic's position, the first to speak is typically not only a man but also the more original artist. So reviewing a book like Jessica Hendra's is a tricky proposition, requiring tact, sensitivity and whatever quality it is that allows one to rush in where angels fear to tread. USA Today journalist Blake Morrison wrote the book with Hendra, making it better than it might otherwise be, presumably imposing the dependable form of unfolding two stories in tandem, intercutting the past with the present. The narrative shifts smoothly between Jessica's childhood with her self-sacrificing mother, her stoic sister and her charismatic, substance-abusing, philandering, volatile father, and her later life as a wife and mother coping with the aftereffects of having been allegedly molested by that same father. Born in 1965 to parents who did a lot of drugs, swam naked in front of the neighbors and frowned on establishment organizations like the Girl Scouts, Jessica Hendra says she has had to work to evolve into a functional adult. She comes across as earnest and likable, but even the help of a seasoned writer cannot make her memoir transcend its agenda. By now familiar with the territory-the sins of unconventional parents visited on their children-readers will come to Jessica Hendra for only one reason: to discover her side of the bitter conflict that erupted in the wake of her father's publishing an account of spiritual awakening that failed to acknowledge what she considers his greatest sin. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Tony Hendra's daughter explains why she went public with the story of his incestuous sexual abuse. Tony was one of the guiding lights of the National Lampoon during its glory days in the 1970s. In his bestselling memoir, Father Joe (2004), he wrote in very vague terms of his "misplaced sexual guilt." Reading rave reviews that commended Tony for his supposed honesty, his daughter Jessica was shocked. At no point in the book, she saw, did he acknowledge the times that he forced her to commit incest. She decided to finally talk about her secret, in a public way that prompted an investigation by the New York Times. Her excellent memoir starts at this shocking moment, then winds back to tell the story of her life with Tony in a clipped, naturalistic voice. A British comedian who had once performed with John Cleese, Tony moved to L.A. to work in television, but never got a big break. Jessica was six years old in 1971 when the family relocated to New Jersey to further her father's career. Not long after that, the first abuse happened, quickly followed by publication in the Lampoon of Tony's disturbing and purportedly funny piece that gives Jessica's memoir its title. (As depicted here, much of Tony's "humorous" writing seems more like an attempt to rub people's faces in his own emotional problems.) In gripping, straightforward prose, Jessica depicts her childhood among frenetically drug-fueled and rage-prone comics like John Belushi and Saturday Night Live writer Michael O'Donoghue. She lays out in an unadorned fashion her drift into self-hatred and anorexia, as well as Tony's increasing megalomania, sexual obsessions and drug consumption. It's hard not to see him as a monster-a label thatJessica assiduously avoids in her uncommonly fair and evenhanded memoir. A polished and touching piece of work.
Riveting . . . [Hendra’s] head-on confrontation with her demons is the ultimate story of bravery.” — USA Today
“Captivating, witty, and not self-pitying.” — Jane
“Sharply written and absorbing.” — Library Journal
“Excellent . . . gripping . . . Uncommonly fair and evenhanded. . . . A polished and touching piece of work.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Literature of moral power. . . . Father Joe may not have saved [Tony Hendra], but in writing her book, his daughter may have saved herself.” — New York Times
“Lucid and trustworthy . . . exemplifies the reasons for and the costs and rewards of a life intent on healing.” — Christian Century
Literature of moral power. . . . Father Joe may not have saved [Tony Hendra], but in writing her book, his daughter may have saved herself.
Lucid and trustworthy . . . exemplifies the reasons for and the costs and rewards of a life intent on healing.
Captivating, witty, and not self-pitying.
Riveting . . . [Hendra’s] head-on confrontation with her demons is the ultimate story of bravery.
Riveting . . . [Hendra’s] head-on confrontation with her demons is the ultimate story of bravery.
Captivating, witty, and not self-pitying.
