I’m a French-born, London-based novelist and food writer. As an author, I have nurtured my voice at the kitchen counter, where I find language loosens up and as a reader, cookbooks, food memoirs, and novels sit in one pile on my bedside table. Food is never not political and I find that its depiction is a wonderful narrative tool, for plot development with the setting of a meal or to portray a character through ingredients for examples. The relationship between food, culture, and writing is something I also explore with my podcast, book club, and culinary community The Salmon Pink Kitchen. Happy reading, and bon appétit!
If you enjoy a long novel, gossip, and the dark side of life, then look no further.
Based on the true story of the women whom Truman Capote called ‘his swans,’ and who deserted him after he had published an indiscreet short story about their lives in Esquire, Swan Song is filled with socialite glitters and cocktails. From meals eaten on planes to the high-end restaurants of New York City, food and drinks are key to the novel’s development.
My personal highlight is the account of Babe Paley’s last meal, which was served after her funeral and which she had organised herself while being ill with lung cancer. ‘The luncheon to end all luncheons,’ as writes Greenberg-Jephcott, is a wonderful example of how the description of a meal can portray a character brilliantly.
WINNER OF THE McKITTERICK PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSBORO BOOKS GLASS BELL AWARD
'Sparkling' GUARDIAN 'Fascinating' RED 'Remarkable' WOMAN AND HOME 'Astounding' EMERALD STREET 'Glamorous' IRISH TIMES 'Scandalous' DAILY MAIL 'Spellbinding' SUNDAY EXPRESS ___________________________
To the outside world, they were the icons of high society - the most glamorous and influential women of their age. To Truman Capote they were his Swans: the ideal heroines, as vulnerable as they were powerful. They trusted him with their most guarded, martini-soaked secrets, each believing she was more special and loved than the next...
I devoured this modern classic comedy of manners like a good period drama.
The novel follows the adolescent years of Sebastian, duke and heir of the country house Chevron, where his mother Lucy plots luncheons and indulges parties where alcohol, games, and affairs are the prime guests. The tone is witty and the food, from the ingredients on display to the behaviours of those who eat, is used as a powerful show of appearances.
An instant bestseller when it was published in 1930, this glittering satire of Edwardian high society features a privileged brother and sister torn between tradition and a chance at an independent life.
Sebastian is young, handsome, moody, and the heir to Chevron, a vast and opulent ducal estate. He feels a deep love for the countryside and for his patrimony, but he loathes the frivolous social world his mother and her shallow friends represent. At one of his mother’s decadent house parties, Sebastian meets two people who shake his sense of self: Leonard Anquetil, a lowborn arctic explorer, who questions…
Constance is a wild, stubborn young girl growing up poor in a small industrial town in the late 1800's. Beneath her thread-worn exterior beats the heart of a dreamer and a wordsmith. But at age twelve, she’s orphaned. Running away to join the circus—like kids do in adventure books—seems like…
We’re back on the darker side of life with a book that mixes anger and hunger for a compulsive read.
51 years old twins Jeanie and Julius live with their mother Dot in rural isolation and poverty. They make music and sustain their diet with what they grow in their garden and bread, until Dot dies suddenly and life as the siblings knew it is gone. The family history is confined and the writing lyrical in this incisive portrait of life as outsiders.
Unsettled Groundshows that food is political and I love how Fuller depicts class issues through the descriptions of food shopping, gardening, and cooking.
Named a Best Book of the Month by Entertainment Weekly, PopSugar, Bustle, Chicago Review of Books, PureWow, a Best Book of Summer by Daily Beast and one of Good Housekeeping's Best Books of 2021
"Full of dramatic twists and turns right up until its moving, beautiful end." —NPR Books
At fifty-one years old, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation in the English countryside. The cottage they have shared their entire lives is their only protection against the modernizing world…
This semi-autobiographical novel follows the romantic misadventures of food writer Rachel, whose husband has fallen in love with another woman. Lost between wanting him dead and wanting him back, Rachel shares her favourite recipes to heal the heart along with hilarious one-liners.
Be ready to crave mashed potatoes with this absolute classic in the genre. If you’re still unsure, the audiobook is read by Meryl Streep, who also starred in the movie aside Jack Nicholson.
If I had to do it over again, I would have made a different kind of pie. The pie I threw at Mark made a terrific mess, but a blueberry pie would have been even better, since it would have permanently ruined his new blazer, the one he bought with Thelma ... I picked up the pie, thanked God for linoleum floor, and threw it' Rachel Samstat is smart, successful, married to a high-flying Washington journalist... and devastated. She has discovered that her husband is having an affair with Thelma Rice, 'a fairly tall person with a neck as long…
A mysterious stranger traps teen siblings in a precarious game where each must overcome their embittered past for the other to survive.
This suspenseful, yet winsome novel explores the power of family and forgiveness. But take heed. The truth can cut like shards of glass, especially for those who’d rather…
If you’re looking for a novel that will make your mouth water with flavours and cravings, then Elisa Shua Dusapin is the writer you need. From the supermarket’s chilled section to hot pots of noodles, the pages of this short novel are an explosion for the senses. But the descriptions of the food are not only delicious, they also serve the purpose of the plot in this novel set over the course of one summer in Tokyo, about identity, loneliness, and language.
The Pachinko Parlour is translated from French into English by Aneesa Abbas Higgins and will be published in the UK on 18th August 2022.
From the author of Winter in Sokcho, Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
The days are beginning to draw in. The sky is dark by seven in the evening. I lie on the floor and gaze out of the window. Women’s calves, men’s shoes, heels trodden down by the weight of bodies borne for too long.
It is summer in Tokyo. Claire finds herself dividing her time between tutoring twelve-year-old Mieko, in an apartment in an abandoned hotel, and lying on the floor at her grandparents’: daydreaming, playing Tetris, and listening to the sounds from the…
London, 2019. A yellow kitchen stands as a metaphor for the lifelong friendship between three women: Claude, the baker, goal-orientated Sophie, and political Giulia. They are chasing life and careers; dating, dreaming, and consuming but always returning to be reunited in the yellow kitchen. That is, until a trip to Lisbon unravels unexplored desires between Claude and Sophie.
A novel of belonging and friendship, The Yellow Kitchenis a hymn to the last year of London as we knew it and a celebration of the culture, the food, and the rhythms we live by.
After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through young adulthood. Miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are displaced from their land by multinational energy companies. They are taken…
1184 BCE. Ramesses III, who will become the last of the great pharaohs, is returning home from battle. He will one day assume the throne of the Egyptian empire, and the plots against him and his children have already started. Even a god can die.
