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A collection of insightful essays on food accompanied by a host of recipes, Literary Feasts explores the significance of food in literature. Each featured meal - from Madam Bovary's wedding feast of chicken fricassee, to Doc's beer milkshake from Canary Row - has been set down in recipe form as authentically as possible so readers may duplicate them at home.
Drawing on culinary traditions of the times and cultures at the center of each novel, the author serves up an eggplant epiphany from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love In The Time Of Cholera, jam tarts from D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, to Mrs Ramsay's famous boeuf en daube dinner in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, and much more. Accompanying thought-provoking essays define the role of food in each work: as part of a larger metaphor, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; as a way of depicting character, like the bland diet of the dull Mr Woodhouse in Jane Austen's Emma; as a means of adding vivid detail in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.
Readers can sample the foods featured in:
- Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
- Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
- Saul Bellow's Herzog
- Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie
- Earnest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast
- Kate Chopin's The awakening
- and more.
Literary Feasts is sure to please book lovers and gourmets alike.
- Back Cover Blurb.
I can think of no better way to spend an afternoon than lying on the sofa, eating bonbons and reading a novel.
- First Sentence; Introduction.
(Please note because of the nature of the book I shan't feature My Memorable Moment)
SOURCE ... On loan from a friend, thanks Pat.
READ FOR A CHALLENGE? ... No.
MY THOUGHTS ... Fascinating reading. Whilst not a lover of the classics and certainly, not by any stretch of the imagination, a cook I can, hand on heart, say reading this I'm tempted to read several of the novels featured whilst getting Mr T to rustle up one or two of the less exotic recipes; recipes that the author 'has tried to make as accurate to the time and place of each novel as possible' given that some of the dishes featured may not have actually existed at all and some of the older recipes are often vague when it comes to weighing ingredients, that what was thought palatable then may not be considered so today.
5 comments:
How are you doing?
This sounds like a fascinating book! I don't think I'd be tempted to try preparing any of the dishes (since I doubt any would fall into my way of eating), but it would be interesting to see what's listed. If you do convince Mr T to prepare any of them for you, I hope you'll include photos and explanations.
Felicity,
Neither, am I a cook, but it
sounds like a very interesting
book. And I will keep it in mind.
Thank you for your excellent review.
Raven
I'm glad you found this fascinating. It sounds intriguing to me. Excellent review!
I think that this is a really neat idea for a book. I love food. I like it when food is incorporated into literature.
I really like the first sentence.
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