Years ago, when I read Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s Dogs Never Lie About Love and When Elephants Weep, I recall being impressed by his wide-ranging, compassionate mind. So it seemed natural, after Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals (see my review) profoundly affected me, to read Masson’s new book The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food. Like Foer’s book, Masson’s effort is a plea for ethical treatment of animals, by refusing to harvest, kill and eat them, but it is also a paean to the joys of vegetarianism. The author has a magpie’s instinct for collecting interesting facts and stories, and here he weaves his knowledge into a plea for compassionate, healthy eating. Especially valuable for me was a chapter in which Masson chronicles his own diet and culinary habits. How rich he makes the vegetarian life sound!
The structure of The Face on Your Plate is discursive, sometimes almost random, and anyone seeking a coolly logical treatise on the moral advantages of vegetarianism would best go elsewhere. Yet it is the humane, highly personal exploration of these issues that gives the book its strong charm. Masson is an eloquent stylist, and that style is put to the service of an emotional message that hits its mark.
Powerful but never sanctimonious. 3 stars.