Literature is often – always? – about change: changing ideas, feelings, relationships, situations. And often such changes are brought about through a change in location. Commonly characters in novels move from one place to another in the course of the story: for example, Caithleen and Baba in Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls or Eilis in Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn. In both these examples, the characters’ physical journey from provincial Ireland to big cities (Dublin in The Country Girls, New York in Brooklyn) mirrors a personal journey from naivety to experience. Continue reading “Food and change”
Month: August 2020
Food and memory loss
On more than one occasion I’ve blogged about the role of memory in accounts of food and eating in literature. From the narrator’s memories of delicious childhood teas at his best friend’s house in Michael Frayn’s Spies, to Flora Thompson’s memories of the food practices of her native Oxfordshire in the early 20th century in her autobiography Lark Rise to Candleford, food plays a significant role in writers’ and characters’ memories of the past. Continue reading “Food and memory loss”