Toast

     I've been reading Nigel Slater's memoir, Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger. As the book is written in bite-size pieces, most linked to a dish or foodstuff, I've been feasting on his 'canapes' of prose, savouring them with all their desperately sad, poignant but marvellously evocative seasoning. This is Proustian association of life with food, beautifully written, and at times very painful to read.

    There are Alan Bennett-like lines such as "[They were] the sort of women...who would never leave the house without a brooch", "In Wolverhampton, Arctic Roll was considered something of a status symbol" and "Mother's greens [were] the colours of an army surplus store." But the humour is overlaid with the hunger referred to in the subtitle: not physical but emotional. A distant father, a sick mother, her death and then the father's remarriage meant the skinny, unhappy little boy had a miserable childhood and bleak adolescence, and food - its preparation and consumption - became a means of escape.

     This is also social history, charting "larder snobbery" and the pretensions attached to food in suburban England in the 1960s and 70s, and that and its period detail set it firmly in a time and place which many readers will recognise, perhaps slightly uncomfortably.

     But any man who can write "When you catch porridge at the right moment it is like being wrapped in a cashmere blanket. A food so comforting and soul-warming you imagine there is no problem on earth it could not solve" has the deepest appreciation of what food can really mean, not as mere fuel but as sensuous delight and emotional sustenance, and it is that which comes across most strongly in all his writing.

Comments

[Rebecca]

I love Nigel Slater's writing but have not yet read Toast, I think I must.

Just wanted to add, how much I enjoyed yesterday's post, not least because it conjured up perfectly an acquaintance of mine with whom I have had a similar conversation.

[Melissa!]

Completely understand that statement of porridge! One morning while staying w/ his Mom, my husband & I went on a 5 mile bike ride into town for breakfast. I thought I was going to die! We don't know what obsessed us to attack that bike ride on empty stomachs. When we got to the bakery I ordered the first item I saw, "oatmeal". It was the most incredible breakfast - I was in heaven! I savored every bite (short of licking the bowl clean in public!)and deemed it the most delicious breakfast ever - so worth the helacious bike ride! I'd do it again...eh, almost! ;)

[Peter the flautist]

Cats love Cashmere; indeed pure sheep wool I cannot wear - I am so sensitive! Ah it is food that is being discussed, well this cat has just lunched at Moro, mmmmmmmmmmmmm Dark Puss.

[tara]

I read Toast earlier this year and just loved it. I wasn't expecting it to be so dark. Slater's book Real Cooking is sitting by my bedside and I've been dipping into in nightly. He writes about food in just the most brilliant way and you've described it perfectly in your last paragraph.

[Barbara]

I tend to avoid hyped-up books so I didn't really expect Toast to be any good. I loved it! One I shall definitely be reading again.

[ohsovintage]

When this was first published I did think of buying it but then dismissed it as probably being too much about cooking and food (both of which I enjoy, I hasten to add). Having read your post I shall definitely read it as it sounds just my type of book, especially the Alan Bennett type observations.

[Carole]

When I read your post yesterday, I had just listened to the first part of a story by Alan Bennett on Radio 4, about the Queen and a mobile library. The Queen said exactly the same thing about 'doing'. I much prefer reading to doing, but fortunately I am able to do both!

[Harriet]

I read this earlier this year and loved it.