Showing results by narrator "Camilla Rockley" in All Categories

From family feasts to comfort food, first dates to office cake; how does what we eat define us, and the relationships we have with others? Finney investigates the role that food plays in modern society, exploring how eating unites us in varied ways throughout our lives. She discusses her own childhood spent in her grandmother’s hotel kitchen. She talks about the meals and recipes that have shaped the person she is today.

Diaries hold all manner of things: they allow us a moment to be completely personal, to self-aggrandise, to focus on self-reflection without concern of what someone on the outside might think. Discovered or published diaries of the past have also provided glimpses into history, eras and minds gone by, especially the inner lives otherwise unknown.

Drawing richly from scientific and botanical ideas, the novel plunges into a whirl of ever-expanding themes: the contrasts between modern India and its colonial past; urban life and the countryside; capitalism and centuries-old traditions of generosity and gratitude; script and 'song and stone'. At the heart of the book lies a tussle between different ways of seeing—those that fix and categorize, and those that free and unify.