A Feast of Words: For Lovers of Food and Fiction

From Booklist
Shapiro melds the art of literature with the craft of cuisine, pairing inventive menus with passages from treasured fiction. Barbara Pym, Charles Dickens, Colette, Doris Lessing, and Thomas Hardy--these and countless other writers knew just how effective it could be to interject descriptions of food or meals partaken in order to move a story along or depict stirring emotional quandaries. "Starved Love," "Penitential Meals," and "Eating the Social Index" are a few of the categories Shapiro assembles, designating various perspectives found in classic novels spanning Anna Karenina to Marjorie Morningstar. The recipes are straightforward, easy to follow, and perhaps most intriguing for their literary connotations. Alice Joyce


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A Feast of Words serves up twenty-five classic novels and stories, including Emma by Jane Austen and "Royal Beatings" by Alice Munro. Anna Shapiro provides incisive and entertaining commentary on the food scenes in the works and original recipes that feed the fancy as well as the palate. Over tea in Doris Lessing's "A Good Neighbour" a widow discovers love for the first time. To accompany the author's lively text, you'll find recipes for Honey and Orange Bread, Apple and Cheese Bread, and Sesame Loaf, while learning how to brew a perfect pot of tea. A wilder kind of love is made over stew in James Cain's Serenade. You'll find out that all of Tolstoy's huge novel of adultery, Anna Karenina, is compacted in one lunch scene: "Rolls sometimes smell so good that you can't resist them!" To accompany the scene, you'll find a truly elemental recipe for borscht. Shapiro, a novelist, finds that looking at books from the perspective of food yields insights and dishes as lively as they are rich. Personal as well as funny, the commentary will not only tell you everything you ever wanted to know about asparagus but also takes into account the food politics of, say, A Little Princess. A Feast of Words provides inspired menus for dinner parties and family meals, lovers' tete-atetes and homey lunches. Using it, you can regale guests with stories and food: pasta with lobster sauce, crunchy roast potatoes, the best chocolate mousse, cafe con leche, in a cookbook that is a work of art and a joy to read.


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