Just under two years ago I wrote a post about Elizabeth Jane Howard’s novel The Light Years, the first novel in a series of five – The Cazalet Chronicles – a family saga spanning three generations and unfolding between 1937 and 1950. The Light Years covers the build-up to the Second World War and – in culinary terms – is a masterclass in the writer’s use of food to locate a story in a particular moment in time. Continue reading “Food as distraction”
Tag: Second World War
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”
Food and memory
As I’ve already discussed in previous posts, food and memory are inextricably bound up together.
In Lark Rise to Candleford (1945), her autobiographical account of her Oxfordshire childhood, Flora Thompson’s food memories evoke the old custom and habits of a world that has long since disappeared and the delight of being a child at this time. Continue reading “Food and memory”
Food and alienation
I said, ‘Excuse me. I will ask you something if I may. Can you perchance tell me…’ I raised my head to look upon her in the eye and asked, ‘How do you make a chip?’ (Andrea Levy, Small Island) Continue reading “Food and alienation”