How to Cook Your Daughter
If I had not read Father Joe, by Tony Hendra, I might never have read How to Cook Your Daughter. Having read the former, though, I felt morally bound to give equal attention to the latter.
Tony Hendra’s 2004 book is a memoir of redemption. After the author was caught in a compromising position with a married woman at age 14, the woman’s husband took him to the Isle of Wight to meet the book’s title character, a cloistered Benedictine monk. Where Hendra expected condemnation, he found forgiveness, astute good humor and kindness. Monastic life appealed to him, but later, at Cambridge University, he found a different calling: to save the world through comedy—specifically the harsh satire he perfected as a writer and editor at National Lampoon.
Tony Hendra’s 2004 book is a memoir of redemption. After the author was caught in a compromising position with a married woman at age 14, the woman’s husband took him to the Isle of Wight to meet the book’s title character, a cloistered Benedictine monk. Where Hendra expected condemnation, he found forgiveness, astute good humor and kindness. Monastic life appealed to him, but later, at Cambridge University, he found a different calling: to save the world through comedy—specifically the harsh satire he perfected as a writer and editor at National Lampoon.
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