Writing style of McAllester

I made a comment in class on Wednesday about how I felt that in Bittersweet, McAllester seems to arrive at conclusions too quickly. Personally I would appreciate if he conducted a little more internal discussion before deciding that the only way to connect with his dead mother was by going through her old cookbooks. For example: "I wanted to put back together what had long ago been lost and broken. My mother could help me with that, I decided....I should read her cookbooks" (40, Bittersweet). I understand that McAllester is attempting to convey that discovering the ability to connect with his mother was a huge revelation for him. However, I still found it to be abrupt.

He continues to reference to this "revelation" throughout the novel, and I think I have started warming up to this abrupt concept of declaring something. Later on, he writes: "It was time to start being a reporter again, to look at my mother's papers, her recipes, the home movies, to make some calls and piece things together. I would have to accept that some of what I would find would be painful" (121, Bittersweet). Again, after considering the paragraphs preceding the one I have included in this post, McAllester seems to quickly arrive at a solution to his problem of not fully being able to connect to his mother. This time though, it seems less abrupt, possibly only because his style of writing is growing on me.