Jyoti Patel’s debut novel, The things that we lost, explores the idea of loss in a number of different ways. Continue reading “Food and loss”
Tag: chocolate
The Chocolate War
Disagreements over chocolate are commonplace: some people prefer milk, some dark. Family members and friends may well argue over who gets to eat the nation’s favourite Quality Street (according to a 2021 article in the Daily Telegraph it is the purple one ) and who is lumbered with the least favourite (the orange creme according to the same article). But you wouldn’t normally expect such differences to be described as a ‘war’. Continue reading “The Chocolate War”
A Chemistry Lesson
It is not uncommon for cooking – specifically baking – to be likened to chemistry. The way that baking requires the cook to mix together ingredients in specific quantities which then combine and, through the application of heat, turn into a new product, is not dissimilar to what happens in the chemistry experiments we all participated in at school. Continue reading “A Chemistry Lesson”
Olive Kitteridge: We are all starving
The novel Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009, presents a picture of life in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine. It has an unconventional structure for a novel: instead of a plot that develops in the course of the novel, with a climax and resolution, it is structured as 13 separate, but interrelated short stories. Continue reading “Olive Kitteridge: We are all starving”