Life, Love, and Irish Soda Bread

I just finished reading a wonderful book called "Recipes for a Perfect Marriage". The stories of two Irish women's lives, loves, and marriages. The author somehow creatively matches up Irish dishes and the amount of work you have to put into them, to coincide with these women's marriages. Each chapter begins with a new recipe, which seems to mirror exactly the new phase of life and marriage for each of these women. The novel was less about the perfect marriage than it was about all of the different type of loves that people fall in throughout their lives; mother love, sister love, parent love, friend love, self love, passion love, and finally, husband love; things that make a marriage perfect, including all of a marriage's imperfections. My favorite passage in the book was the author, Morag Prunty's description of a mother's love, which I would never have understood if I read this book just two years ago. I found myself getting all misty and I just had to share it:

"No matter what wisdoms or tricks for happiness you learn, a mother worries every day of her life for her child. A wise one will pretend to let them go to keep them, but it's just a sensible lie. Motherhood is a sweet, sweet suffering; a joy today is marked by fear for tomorrow and a craving for yesterday."- Morag Prunty.

I highly recommend this as a read. Although I must warn that many people who know me well have looked at me sideways when seeing the title, as if I had a "how-to" book in my hands, so be prepared to rattle off something like, "No worries, marriage is fine. This is a novel."