This autobiography by the food critic Grace Dent was described as her journey ‘from growing up eating beige food to becoming one of the much-loved voices on the British food scene. It’s also everyone’s story – from treats with your nan, to cheese and pineapple hedgehogs, to the exquisite joy of cheaply-made apple crumble with custard.’
While not a book that many of our group would have chosen themselves, Hungry definitely brought back a few memories this month. Many group members are a similar age to Grace, which gave a sense of familiarity when she mentioned particular meals. Knowing the foods she described, even if we might not have actually tasted them (Angel Delight, Findus Crispy Pancakes, and Campbell’s Soups for example) gave a lovely nostalgic touch. Some of the group had read her columns, and found the idea of finding out a bit more about her quite interesting.
Several members felt that the book was very relatable and loved her descriptions of the warmth of family meals and the safe childhood memories. Grace’s sense of humour and down to earth approach were especially visible in the passing comments about her mother’s urges to improve their standing: “Sadly, Mother’s aim to be posh was thwarted at every turn by our next-door neighbours, who were resolutely common.”
The excitement of the new supermarket opening locally had higher billing in this autobiography than the fact that her father had a second family. This strike as odd, as does her lack of interest in their existence – along with her father’s description of Grace as ‘his only little girl’. However she is brutally honest about her own failures. The loss of a friend to cancer when she had ghosted them to work on her career was particularly poignant and heart-breaking, as was the obvious (to us) beginnings of her father’s dementia, originally seen as a family joke.
One of our group mentioned that she’d enjoyed it so much that she’d read it in record time. Another had listened to the audiobook read by Grace herself which also contained an interview between Grace and Jay Rayner (another food critic but from a very different background). We did note that there were no pictures of Grace and her family (or indeed Grace on her own) in the book, which was a bit disappointing as it felt like an intrinsic part of the story was missing. This book was definitely one for children of the ’80’s, and although that isn’t what Grace meant by her title, it did indeed make some of us hungry… for foods we hadn’t had since childhood!
Our next book is from the pen of Bernadine Evaristo – Mr Loverman.
This story, described as ‘a ground-breaking exploration of Britain’s older Caribbean community, which explodes cultural myths and fallacies and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves’ is available to borrow from the Education Centre Library at SWFT. Why not pick up your copy and join our next meeting on Wednesday 19th March at 1pm?
Find out more about our reading groups here
Take a look at the blog posts for our previous reads here.
