Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir

Ina Garten (born Ina Rosenberg on February 2, 1948) is the author and protagonist of Be Ready When the Luck Happens. The memoir follows Garten’s life from her childhood in a physically and emotionally abusive home to her successful career as a chef and icon of the food industry. Garten depicts herself as a self-assured creative who uses all the tools at her disposal to advance her career. Despite this desire to succeed, Garten also emphasizes her personal relationships with others in the food industry.

Garten suggests that the “cycle of neglect and abuse” she experienced in her childhood inspired her to challenge herself professionally (16). Throughout her childhood, Garten’s parents made it clear that they “didn’t believe in me or my potential,” (16); despite this, they held Garten and her brother Ken “to impossibly high (and arbitrary) standards” (16). As a result, Garten believed that her ideas weren’t good and that anything she tried would fail. These passages highlight the absurdity of her parents’ emotional abuse: They hold her to high standards while insisting that she can never meet them. As a result, Garden enters high school with low self-esteem.

As a result of her parents abuse, Garten is forced to envision “a completely different life from the one I was living” (8).