Life in Five Senses

January 23, 2023
Bestseller Rubin (The Happiness Project) turns her attention to sensory perception in this flawed offering. Reeling from an eye doctor’s passing comment about her predisposition for a condition that can cause sight loss, Rubin realized she’d been “allowing the sensations of life to slip away unobserved,” whether the feeling of her husband’s stubble or New York City’s “heady of car exhaust, marijuana, and honey-roasted peanuts.” Rubin dedicates a chapter to each sense, weaving together research, personal observations, and musings on its importance to her life. “Taste” involves a food tour of the Lower East Side’s Jewish cuisine with her mother-in-law and children, which helps her realize how bonding over food can “deepen relationships.” The heated tiles of a hotel bathroom floor and a hug, meanwhile, show how touch can confer pleasure or comfort, and daily visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art help the author differentiate subtle variations in color. Rubin suggests practices for readers to deepen sensory awareness, among them hosting a “Taste Party” to compare different varieties of familiar foods. While this outing has its revealing moments, it lacks clear purpose, and Rubin’s aims to extract “deeper insights about the human experience” through sensory awareness are too broad. The author is undoubtedly enthusiastic about her material, but that alone doesn’t salvage this.