47 pages • 1 hour read
Ina GartenBe Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
As Ina Garten prepares to write her memoir, she recalls a day early in her relationship with her future husband Jeffrey. Jeffrey, a sophomore in college, wanted to spend Ina’s weekend visit hiking, but Ina, a college senior who wanted to socialize, quickly grew tired. Although she was afraid of disappointing him the way she often did her strict and unyielding parents, Garten veered off the trail and created her own slower trail using switchbacks. Rather than growing angry, Jeffrey laughed and cheered at Garten’s ingenuity. Looking back, Garten takes this moment as a preview of both the challenges she would face throughout her life and the support Jeffrey would offer throughout their relationship. Three years later, they were married.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Over the Wall”
At age 30, Garten is growing tired of her job writing nuclear energy policy for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Although she finds the job intellectually stimulating, she is frustrated by the slow pace of government and the fact that her work rarely produces tangible results. Sensing her unhappiness, her husband Jeffrey suggests that she find a new job more closely related to her passions. When Garten sees an advertisement for the sale of a small gourmet food store in Westhampton, a small town on the tip of New York’s Long Island, she feels compelled to visit.
On the six hour drive from Washington, DC to Westhampton, Garten identifies a number of reasons they should not buy the store, such as Jeffrey’s job and her inexperience with owning a business. On arrival, however, she immediately falls in love with the space. Jeffrey suggests offering $5000 less than the asking price in order to buy time to consider the purchase. The offer is immediately accepted, shocking them both.
Chapter 2 Summary: “What Goes in Early Goes in Deep”
Garten’s parents are disappointed by her decision, seeing the move from the White House to Westhampton as a demotion. The narrative moves back 30 years to Ina’s childhood. For the first five years of her life, Ina and her parents live with her paternal grandparents, Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland. Her father’s parents are warm and loving, but her mother’s parents are cold and unwelcoming.
At age five, the family moves to Stamford, Connecticut. The family’s picture-perfect appearances disguises the coldness of their family life. Although a popular doctor, Garten’s father is prone to violent outbursts, and is physically and emotionally abusive to the whole family. Garten’s mother is cold and distant. Throughout her childhood, Garten’s parents dismiss her interests and force her to comply with their rules, punishing her harshly when she steps out of line. Garten and her brother are raised believing that they are unlikely to amount to much in life.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Don’t Even Waste the Stationery”
At the age of 16, Ina Garten travels with her parents to visit her brother Ken at Dartmouth College. Ken sets Ina up on a date with his friend Roger; shortly before the date, Roger’s friend Jeffrey Garten spots Ina and is immediately smitten. When Roger and Ina’s date proves unromantic, Jeffrey begs Roger to give him Ina’s contact information. Although initially annoyed at the idea of Roger passing her off to Jeffrey, she responds to his letters and is quickly charmed by his intelligence and wit.
Jeffrey arranges to visit Ina in Connecticut and allows her to arrange their date. She suggests they drive to a bar on the New York border, but doesn’t have any form of ID, and the couple are turned away. Jeffrey later reports that he felt a strong impulse to take care of and protect Ina in that moment, sensing her naivete and difficult childhood.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Meet the Parents”
Garten’s growing relationship with Jeffrey makes her even more anxious to leave her parents’ restrictive household. Jeffrey takes a summer job in Long Island in order to spend more time with her. Garten’s parents are on their best behavior during Jeffrey’s visits: Her father offers him valuable career advice while her mother cooks delicious and comforting food to impress him. Garten is unwilling to reveal their cold and abusive natures to him.
Garten’s acceptance into Syracuse University emboldens her to ask her parents for permission to visit Jeffrey at Dartmouth. Her parents agree that she can visit him three times during her senior year, and Garten uses all three visits before October. Jeffrey realizes that if he visits the family to ask permission in person, Garten’s father is too polite to say no. Garten falls in love with Jeffrey on her visits to Dartmouth. Her mother encourages her to date while at college, but Garten knows her relationship with Jeffrey is special.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Sadie, Sadie, Married Lady”
When Garten begins college, her parents restrict her finances in order to discourage her from using her newfound freedom to visit Jeffrey. As a result, she spends most of her time and energy at Syracuse finding ways to get to him. In one instance, they both lie to their parents about visiting friends in Albany in order to spend an unchaperoned weekend alone. Although terrified their parents will find out, they are thrilled to be alone together. As Garten spends time with Jeffrey’s welcoming family, she grows to love him more.
Shortly before his college graduation, Jeffrey suggests that they get married so that she can move to North Carolina with him to fulfill his military service. Garten’s mother insists the marriage will be a mistake, but her father encourages it, having come to see Garten through Jeffrey’s eyes. The couple are married in December 1968 at Garten’s parents’ home in Stamford, Connecticut.
Chapter 6 Summary: “That Girl”
The newlyweds’ honeymoon is disrupted when their luggage is lost. Jeffrey’s persistence earns them a $300 reward even after the luggage is found, and he uses it to buy her a luxurious cashmere outfit and pearl earrings. After the honeymoon, Garten returns to college while Jeffrey completes his military training in North Carolina. In order to supplement their income, she buys and resells donuts to students at Syracuse.
When Garten joins Jeffrey in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, she is excited to build their home together, despite their meager budget. Her first dinner party is awkward, but she quickly grows as a chef and hostess, making elaborate meals for Jeffrey and his fellow officers. Jeffrey encourages her to continue her degree and pursue a career. Garten earns her pilot’s license and works at a book store run by a retired admiral, whose example teaches her how not to treat employees. When Jeffrey is assigned to a year-long posting in Thailand, Garten returns to her parents’ home in Connecticut.
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Body Shop Doesn’t Do Car Repairs??”
After a few miserable months at her parents’ home in Stamford, Garten arranges to meet Jeffrey in Tokyo. The reunion makes her realize that she doesn’t want to be without him, and she decides to move to Thailand to be with him after graduation. She experiences good luck throughout the journey: When she neglects to arrange a hotel during a layover in Belgium, her seatmate offers her a hotel room. When she arrives in Thailand, she has no plans for where to stay when she’s not with Jeffrey; at a dinner party her first night there, a fellow American offers to let her stay with his family.
Jeffrey serves the last six months of his military service in Colorado Springs. Garten works a series of secretarial jobs, including in the office of a strip club. Along with her friend Carolyn, Garten continues to grow as a chef and hostess.
Prologue-Chapter 7 Analysis
In the opening chapters of Be Ready When the Luck Happens, memoirist Ina Garten establishes a conversational authorial voice. This voice aligns with the persona she has developed in her cookbooks and in her television show Barefoot Contessa, Garten has established a strong audience of fans who feel as if they know her personally. The prologue acknowledges this perceived relationship, as Garten tells readers intimately that she “can’t wait to tell you my story” (2), addressing the reader directly to evoke the impression of a personal relationship.
Garten maintains this personal, causal tone throughout the opening chapters. In one instance, she ends an anecdote about a favorite gift with a reflection that sounds like an off the cuff comment to a friend: “now that I’m thinking about it, that tea set was really educational, considering what I do today” (15). The phrasing in this passage suggests that she is telling these stories without pretense, considering their implications as she speaks in an informal, stream-of-consciousness manner. In another instance, she prefaces a scandalous story about her early relationship with Jeffrey by admitting conspiratorially that she “can’t believe I’m opening this door, even a crack, but this story is too good not to share” (42). This voice reflects Garten’s longevity in American food culture and her personal relationship with her audience.
The opening chapters reflect the memoir’s interest in The Emotional Importance of Food, a central theme in Be Ready When the Luck Happens. Garten portrays her mother as a cold, distant parent whose cooking reflects her lack of interest in demonstrations of affection. Her approach to food is utilitarian; for instance, the lunches she sends to school are “more nutritious than delicious” (16) and feature simple items like “sardine sandwiches, tuna without the mayonnaise, a handful of raw carrots” (16)—items intended to supply the body’s needs without providing any pleasure or comfort. Garten longs for comfort food such as a “gooey peanut butter and jelly sandwich on fluffy white bread” (16), like her friends’ parents provide. At a young age, Garten sees food as a means of showing love and giving emotional support.
As a teenager, Garten uses food to demonstrate her growing affection for her future husband Jeffrey. She realizes that “baking something delicious was a way to express my feelings and to connect with Jeffrey” (35). Garten would “think of him while I cooked, and when he reached for one of my cookies or brownies, I knew he’d think of me” (35). These passages suggest that Garten understands what her mother did not—that food is not only a form of sustenance, but also a means of communicating affection. From the beginning of their relationship, Garten used food to demonstrate her love for and grow her relationship with Jeffrey.
The memoir begins with an anecdote featuring Garten and her future husband Jeffrey, highlighting the importance of his influence in her life. These early chapters suggest that Garten’s relationship with Jeffrey began primarily as a response to the cruelty she faced at home and as rebellion against her parents’ rules. At home, Garten is “trapped in a cycle of neglect and abuse” (16) in which her parents “didn’t believe in me or my potential, but they held me to impossibly high and (arbitrary) standards, nonetheless” (16). As a result, she grew up believing that “my ideas weren’t good [and] worse still, anything I tried to do would have negative consequences” (20). Garten explicitly compares Jeffrey to her parents, suggesting that he offered an escape from their negativity: “behind me were two people for whom I could do nothing right and in front of me was a smart, funny guy who thought everything I did was a total revelation” (34). Jeffrey is an important and influential character throughout the memoir; these passages suggest that Garten was drawn to him because he offered emotional support and believed in her in a way her parents could not.
These early chapters also imply that Garten pursued Jeffrey in order to rebel from her parents’ strict rules. Garten quickly identifies her “mother’s plot to separate” (42) her from Jeffrey and intentionally works around it. She describes their marriage as “literally the first time I’d ever defied either of my parents and stood my ground” (45). As such, it is the first time she demonstrates The Importance of Instinct and Self-Determination. In breaking away from her controlling, emotionally unsupportive parents, she chooses the kind of life she wants. This willingness to follow her instincts and chart her own course will become a defining principle for her life from this point on. These passages suggest that Garten resented her parents’ attempts to control her romantic life, and she intentionally pursued Jeffrey despite their objections.
