Literature and home

I love reading a book set in the place in which I live.  Coming across familiar buildings, landmarks and street names as I turn the pages of a novel arouses a pride in me that where I live is worthy of literary treatment.  The delight is increased when the geographical references are unexpected.  Discovering a passage in Maggie O’Farrell’s The hand that first held mine (2010), in which the couple at the centre of the present-day narrative take their newborn baby to see a doctor in Dartmouth Park, the area of North London in which I was then living, made me enjoy the book even more.  Continue reading “Literature and home”

The Denial of Food

When food is referred to in literature, it is usually – not surprisingly – because characters are eating it.  And when characters don’t eat, it is usually because they have been deprived of food or the food is inedible, as is the case with Jane Eyre at boarding school Continue reading “The Denial of Food”