Sunday, January 26, 2014

We Love This Book


HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK




Natalie Young's novel is a darkly comic housewife's guide to cannibalism   

“Natalie Young and I are in a Borough Market café chatting about her book Season to Taste. It's not long before our talk turns – to the obvious alarm and discomfort of a couple of elderly ladies perched nearby – to the various ways of preparing and eating your murdered husband’s body.

Will olive oil and salt help make the skin crispy? 
What is the ideal sauce to go with slow-roasted thighs? How to best tenderise the grizzled bits around the feet? 

“You know,” Young announces at one point, a wicked smile playing across her face. “One of my friends told me he actually salivated whilst reading a couple of chapters. 

He thought the idea of crispy brains, noodles, soy sauce and red cabbage was really rather yummy.”











FEATURES






Artist Samantha Mabley has redesigned some of her favourite book covers


Judith Allnatt on the women left behind during the First World War


OK OF THE WEEK





by Katharine Grant
In Katharine Grant's Sedition, four families decide to prepare their daughters for the bridal market. They are newly-rich men in late 17th-century London who know that class matters, and they are determined that their daughters will marry into the upper echelons. They decide to give a music recital where their daughters will play the new-fangled piano and showcase their worth and wealth as prospective wives. 
 Having hit upon a plan, they employ a music teacher to turn their daughters into accomplished musicians. Nearly every character in this book desires a massive change in their lives and this stench of desperation seeps throughout the book, with its dark, dirty, bat-infested music rooms and dingy salons: everything is cheap and grubby. 
Superficially, Sedition is about unrequited love and sexual awakening, but in reality this is a tale of silence and power, revenge, manipulation and a desire to get what you want at any cost.


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