The home of hungry readers
When something bad or upsetting happens our appetite is often quick to disappear. Food is frequently bound up with happy occasions and, when the inverse happens, the last thing we want to do is eat.
However, in Sarah Winman’s 2011 debut novel When God was a Rabbit, food and tragic or difficult events are often combined, creating what seems – initially at least – to be an unsettling effect. Continue reading “Food and tragedy”
Every year since 1901 Nobel Prizes have been awarded in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. The awards system was founded by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist and engineer who left money in his will when he died in 1896 with an instruction that it be used to award prizes to those who have ‘during the preceding year… conferred the greatest benefit to Mankind‘. Continue reading “Food and eccentricity”
During the two long lockdowns that were imposed in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic, I – like many others in the population – took to going for long walks most days. Limited to the routes I could take, to alleviate the boredom I started listening to podcasts, one of which – Backlisted – became a favourite. Continue reading “Women and independence”
In my last post I wrote about the value Clare Chambers grants suburban life in her 2020 novel Small Pleasures. Her protagonist, Jean Swinney, unmarried, in her early 40s and living in the suburbs of South East London with her widowed mother, leads a life of routine and duty, punctuated by ‘[s]mall pleasures – the first cigarette of the day; a glass of sherry before Sunday lunch; a bar of chocolate parcelled out to last a week; a newly published library book still pristine and untouched by other hands; the first hyacinths of spring; a neatly folded pile of ironing..’ Continue reading “A miracle in suburbia”