Better Read Than Dead Book of the Month May: Love & Hunger by Charlotte Wood

Karen writes: Love & Hunger is a book of essays and musings about the pleasures food. Cooking it, serving it and gifting it. It's a very personal book about Charlotte, her family and friends. I did laugh (Apricot Chicken and home economics classes) and cried when the neighbours turned up with a chest freezer on the back of a truck full of food when her dad was very ill.

Talking to Kate who works here about Charlotte's new book, she said Charlotte's writing always made her feel "at home". I think that nails Charlotte's appeal. There's a domesticity to her fiction that allows us to feel comfortable and there are suggestions, another point of view, and a different shade to a character that gets under your skin and makes you view the world in a slightly different way. For me it has the weight of Carol Shields or Anne Tyler in the way they reflect your world back to you but twist it slightly and make you question your own views. This wonderful collection of essays has the same effect.

Her prose is always perfectly dressed: you never see the dainty slip (or tummy strangler) of structure or any such process. It's effortless. And then there are the recipes! They sound magnificently easy and tried and true. I'm inspired to cook them all. In particular, Pomegranate honey, all the fig recipes, the lamb tagine and Charlotte's Chicken Maralinga. Did I mention how delicious the salad recipes sound?
Hopefully without sounding too much of an author stalker I suspect Love & Hunger may be a reflection of Charlotte herself; warm, giving, very down to earth, thoughtful, erudite and utterly luscious.

RRP: $29.99    Online Price: $26.99 - Click Here To Buy Now

Or Buy the Ebook Here