Food as a source of comfort

I’ve written previously about food in dystopian literature, using George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as my chosen text.

In Orwell’s 1948 novel food is as nightmareish as the totalitarian society which is depicted. However, that is not the case in a recent dystopian novel, the 2023 Booker-prize winning novel, Prophet Song, by the Irish writer Paul Lynch, where food is rather a source of comfort.

Lynch’s novel is set in a recognisable near-contemporary Ireland, a country which many left-leaning UK residents (myself included) see as more progressive than our own, with its proportional representation voting system, its continued membership of the European Union and the progress made on social issues (though recent anti-immigration protests do highlight growing right wing populist tendencies).

However, the Ireland depicted in Prophet Song is no liberal and progressive place – in fact quite the opposite. This is a country where the elected government is acting ever more tyranically and putting measures in place to limit its citizens’ freedoms. This in turn is unfurling a wave of rebellion as the country moves slowly but inexorably towards civil war.

The impact of these events on ordinary people is distilled through the central character, Eilish Stack, a scientist and mother of four children, the youngest of which is still a baby, and her attempts to hold together her family against external forces that seem determined to pull it apart.

The novel opens at night, a prescient time for a narrative focusing on the darker side of human nature. Two members of the GNSB (the Garda National Services Bureau), the newly-created secret police force, knock at Eilish’s door. They have come to speak to Eilish’s husband, Larry, the Deputy General of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, but in Larry’s absence won’t explain what the purpose of the visit is. Whilst they tell Eilish it’s ‘nothing to worry about‘ she is unsettled; looking into the dark garden outside, she feels ‘something of that darkness has come into the house‘.

When Larry gets home he dismisses Eilish’s fears, saying to her: “Look, Eilish, you know how they work… no doubt they are building a case against a teacher, so it would make sense they would want to talk to me, give us a heads-up, perhaps before an arrest, look , I will ring them tomorrow or the day after and see what they want.”

However, when Larry goes to the station to speak to the officers he finds himself accused of acts of sedition related to his work as a trade unionist. A few days later, having headed out in the morning to support striking teachers on a protest march he disappears and does not come home.

Larry’s disappearance is only the starting point for a catalogue of events that impact on Eilish as she tries to keep her children safe, look after her ageing father who is suffering from dementia and keep alive her hopes that her husband will return.

At the end of the novel Eilish and what remains of her family have fled to Northern Ireland, and are waiting to board a boat to possible safety, with Eilish saying to her children ‘to the sea, we must go to the sea, the sea is life‘. With the current media focus in the UK on the plight of asylum seekers travelling across the channel in small boats and putting their lives in jeopardy, the reader is left unsettled and fearful for Eilish and her family.

As mentioned above, food in Prophet Song provides a sense of normality and comfort in an otherwise unsettled world. Early on in the novel shortly after Larry has disappeared one of Eilish’s neighbours, Carole Sexton, calls round with ‘three biscuit tins‘ of home baking. Eilish has always found Carole ‘difficult to like‘, not least because of the way she used to flirt with Larry. However, all that is put to one side as Carole is in the same situation as Eilish, with her husband, Jack, also having been arrested. In her grief Carole has taken to baking, and in a long passage with very little punctuation Carole pours out her sorrow to Eilish with her description of all the baking she has done (and brought round to Eilish as she has made far more than she herself can eat):

“..anyway, let me tell you, I had a taste for soda bread last night, I’m not sure I even like soda bread, you know, the traditional kind, but I suddenly developed the taste, the first loaf came out alright, the second was much better, and I had bought so many eggs you see, once you get in the mindset for baking it is hard to stop… I had such an urge last night I thought I’d make some oat cakes as well, the smell of them fresh from the oven, my goodness, and some fruit scones too, and I went from there, to a fruit cake…”

With the novel being set in Ireland, an Irish soda bread seemed to be an ideal choice to make. I consulted my bread-baking bible, Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery from 1977. Despite the book’s title, David does refer to traditionally made Irish soda bread – ‘baked over a peat fire and with meal ground from soft Irish wheat unblended with imported high gluten grain‘ as superior to anything made on this side of the Irish sea, though I wonder how much Irish soda bread is made in that way anymore.

Whilst I don’t have a peat fire in my Liverpool backyard, and didn’t have any Irish wheatmeal at the time of baking, the loaf I made was still delicious and a source of great comfort. It really needs to be eaten on the day it is made, though does make good toast if there’s some leftover the next day.

‘IRISH’ SODA BREAD
Ingredients: (makes one small loaf)
250g wholemeal plain flour
1/2 level teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
1 level teaspoon of fine sea salt
140g buttermilk (or soured milk, or a mixture of milk and yoghurt)
2 tablespoons of warm water (if needed)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 220C / 200C fan/ gas mark 7. Place the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl and mix thoroughly to ensure even distribution.
Add the buttermilk (or alternative) and mix to a dough, adding the warm water if the mixture is too dry.
Shape the loaf into a round, and place on a floured baking tray. Use a sharp knife to make a deep cross cut into the loaf so that when baked it will easily divide into four parts.
Bake in the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes until the loaf has formed a brown crust and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.