Some books call out to be included in my blog: replete with a range of dishes, sweet and savoury, with sufficient detail to enable me to make them in my own kitchen, it’s almost as though the author knew what I was up to! Continue reading “An Italian Feast”
Category: 21st century fiction
Male friendship and food
There is a general assumption that men and women operate very differently when it comes to friendships: whereas for women the focus is on emotional intimacy and support with a smaller number of friends, men tend to have more friends but their friendships are more transactional and based on shared activities and interests. Continue reading “Male friendship and food”
Culinary competitiveness
I’ve written before about rivalry between women – a common theme in literature – in Rosamond Lehmann’s 1953 novel The Echoing Grove and Zoe Heller’s 2003 novel Notes on a Scandal. Female rivalry also appears in Elizabeth Day’s psychological thriller Magpie, entwining with the theme of infertility and the devastating emotional and psychological impact it can have on those affected. Published in 2021 Magpie is a gripping read with a clever, unexpected twist a third of the way through which forces the reader to reappraise what they have read so far. Continue reading “Culinary competitiveness”
A Christmas Tale
Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These might be a slip of a book – it is only 110 pages long – but it packs a mighty punch. Continue reading “A Christmas Tale”