It’s a weird fixation of mine, but I find how different writers’ depict food super interesting! A lot of authors opt for the mechanical approach, but I’ve seen it used for genuine character building moments. Would love to see your recommendations for books with good food description! (Optionally, I’d love to see specific excerpts!)
by LocalizedEldritch
9 Comments
A couple culinary-themed books that come to mind are:
– Land of Milk & Honey by C Pam Zhang
– A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers
– Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
A good 10% of most Murakami books are descriptions of food.
{{The Kamogawa Food Detectives}} by Hisashi Kashiwai has a lot of food imagery!
Charlemagne’s Tablecoth by Nichola Fletcher. Non fiction. It’s amazing.
Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor is the foodiest novel I’ve ever read. well, the MC is a professionally-trained chef, and one of the primary plots is kind of a satire on the whole foodie industry. in one specific Canadian town anyway (Vancouver).
so, yeah. MC cooks stuff. the narrative of everything he cooks is absolutely an extension of his inner monologues and states of mind. Taylor is a really accomplished novelist, so it’s well done. if I cared enough to be into such things, I could probably make half the things that he cooks just from the word on the page; but it didn’t feel like a cookbook with a side of story to me.
Karen Blixen’s short story Babette’s Feast, also an international Oscar winning film.
Crying in H Mart
Eat, pray, love
Hungry Hearts: Thirteen Tales Of Food And Love
Natalie Tan’s Book Of Luck And Fortune