In Virginia Feito’s debut novel Mrs March, a food establishment – the eponymous protagonist’s ‘favorite patisserie – a lovely little place with a red awning and a whitewashed bench in front’ – is the site of a humiliating episode that precipitates a nightmareish journey into paranoia. Continue reading “Food and paranoia”
Tag: Daphne du Maurier
Hotel Life
One of the perks of my job is travel. And since most of my work trips require an overnight stay, I’ve become increasingly familiar with hotel rooms in the last couple of years. I still feel a flutter of excitement when I open the door of a hotel room to see it for the first time – and thankfully the flutter only occasionally turns to disappointment. And the delight of the bedroom is often matched – or surpassed – by the breakfast choices on offer in the hotel restaurant the next morning. Continue reading “Hotel Life”
Breakfast
How impressed I was, I remember well; impressed and a little overawed by the magnificence of the breakfast offered to us. (Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca)
I sometimes think breakfast is my favourite meal. Not breakfast as I eat it on workdays at home – my daily unvarying routine of porridge in the winter months and muesli and yoghurt in the summer – but breakfast at weekends or other occasions when I have time to lavish on it. Continue reading “Breakfast”
A Marriage Proposal
‘So that’s settled, isn’t it?’ he said, going on with his toast and marmalade; ‘instead of being companion to Mrs Van Hopper you become mine, and your duties will be almost exactly the same.’ (Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca)
We often associate marriage proposals with food: candlelit dinners in quiet restaurants, classical music playing in the background and a bottle of champagne at the ready. Continue reading “A Marriage Proposal”