I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir

Restaurateur McNally (The Balzthazar Cookbook) holds little back in this intense autobiography. He opens with his 2018 suicide attempt after suffering a debilitating stroke, then flashes back to his 1950s childhood in London’s East End, a time and place “permeated” by the aftershocks of WWII. McNally writes vividly of his formative years, which saw him leave school at 16 to pursue an acting career. From there, his life took several unexpected turns: McNally moved to Manhattan and was promoted from oyster shucker to maître d’ at a trattoria in Greenwich Village because of his English accent, pursued romantic relationships with men and women, and directed two films, one of which he now disowns (“I’d rather be waterboarded than watch it again”). He went on to open several major New York restaurants in the 1980s and ’90s, including Balthazar and the Odeon, and paints this ongoing phase of his career as a picaresque punctuated by Mafia shakedowns and battles with food critics. Throughout, McNally makes good on his reputation for unvarnished, sometimes-controversial commentary—at one point, he comes to Woody Allen’s defense—but the intimacy this approach generates makes it more of a feature than a bug. It adds up to an intriguing portrait of a complex personality. Agent: Jennifer Joel, CAA. (May)