Food and paranoia

In Virginia Feito’s debut novel Mrs March, a food establishment – the eponymous protagonist’s ‘favorite patisserie – a lovely little place with a red awning and a whitewashed bench in front’ – is the site of a humiliating episode that precipitates a nightmareish journey into paranoia. Continue reading “Food and paranoia”

Food and the nun’s life

When I started my A Level English Literature studies in the late 1980s, the first text I had to read was one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale). I’d never encountered medieval literature before, but from the outset I was hooked. Continue reading “Food and the nun’s life”

Food and tragedy

When something bad or upsetting happens our appetite is often quick to disappear.  Food is frequently bound up with happy occasions and, when the inverse happens, the last thing we want to do is eat.

However, in Sarah Winman’s 2011 debut novel When God was a Rabbit, food and tragic or difficult events are often combined, creating what seems – initially at least – to be an unsettling effect. Continue reading “Food and tragedy”