"That Christensen, the award-winning author of such novels as “The Epicure’s Lament” and “The Great Man,” ended up in Maine is her good fortune, and therefore ours. The Pine Tree state is a food lover’s paradise. The author enriches the book with her adopted state’s history of lobsters, tales of foraging for black trumpet mushrooms and stories of intrepid Mainers who have worked the land."
—Washington Post
"Inspired by M.F.K. Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf, Christensen points out the Maine residents don’t need war to know that life can be hard but sweet. The sweetness she finds is in fresh seafood and wild blueberries, but also in the familiar faces of her Portland friends and neighbors, a crisp, bright day at the beach, or a warm night at home with a bowl of chicken stew."
––Claudia Konsoulas, Appetite for Books Blog
"I like that Ms. Christensen shows us, as M.F.K. Fisher did, the pleasures of a world of food where the scrupulous weighing out of precise calories, vitamins and other nutritional units doesn’t exist, because to labor over it is to exist without spirit...Her book gets us thinking about what we are really hungry for and whether the “rules” of eating have begun to outweigh its pleasures."
—Wall Street Journal
"At its core, How to Cook a Moose is a love story. It is Christensen’s tale of embracing joy at midlife — with her younger husband, with a state — and her gratitude for a locally produced, home-cooked feast shared with those you love."
—Star Tribune
“[An] exuberant, unabashedly gourmand-esque follow-up to Blue Plate Special...Christensen is eating well, in love, and radiating the ‘quiet internal daily joy of living in a culture based on authenticity and integrity.’”
—Kirkus Reviews
“An engaging book that uses a love of food and place to frame Christensen's story of a significant move later in life. Highly recommended for fans of memoirs and of food writing.”
—School Library Journal
“How to Cook a Moose is as lush, lean, and hardy as the region that inspired it. I devoured every word of this beautifully written book.”
—Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train
"How to Cook a Moose is Kate Christensen’s gorgeously composed love letter to Maine, its people, and its food. Like Maine itself, it is both cozy and rugged, grounded in a powerful sense of place. One of our finest novelists is one of our best memoirists and food writers, too.”
—Rosie Schaap, author of Drinking with Men
“How to Cook a Moose is part of a long proud literary tradition that asks: Why do we Americans feel the need to start over? How do we do it? And with whom? And where? Christensen is one of our best, most versatile writers, and her latest is a terrifically smart, funny, disarming story about how we get where we’re meant to go, and what we might eat when we get there.”
—Brock Clarke, author of The Happiest People in the World
"Christensen does a lovely job of weaving commentary on the variety of dishes they eat with sketches and discussions of the people who grow, pick and cook that food."
—Shelf Awareness
"...readers partial to this kind of regional travelogue will find it a treat. "
—Booklist
"Fans of Christensen’s novels and of her cooking-and-living blog, who have drooled for years over her fairy-tale travel, culinary, and romantic adventures with Brendan, will delight in the raucously, unabashedly ecstatic paean to her adopted home in “the northern corner” of New England, and to her delicious, contented life."
—Chicago Tribune
"And ultimately that is what this rhapsodic memoir is about: celebrating good, fresh food, prepared with love–while the issue of how sustainable it all is inevitably weaves its way into the narrative, the real message is, let’s simply appreciate it while we can."
—Bill Lundgren, guest contributer on Bill and Dave's Cocktail Hour
"Irrepressible as ever, Christensen is more narrator than centerpiece here, on a quest to uncover the true Maine spirit. Her interweaving of research, history and interviews works to good effect."
—Joan Silverman, Portland Press Herald
"An utterly transportive and joyful memoir."
—Abbe Wright, Editor of Read it Forward
"A charming, funny and lucid look at food, drink and life in Maine."
––Bill Bushnell, Kennebec Journal
"There is a moment, in the very best of stories, where you find your self — or the self you wish to be. Those connections are what I discovered in the early pages of Kate Christensen’s How to Cook a Moose [. . .] In that initial journey, retraced here, I saw my own; I felt not only peace but also kinship."
––Simran Sethi, Los Angeles Review of Books
