Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger [Anglais] [Broché]

Slater's is a coming-of-age story, both in terms of his childhood and his eventual profession. Slater reads as he writes, beautifully, just as the right wine graces a marvelous meal. His British accent delights as he relates the pleasures of childhood toast, adolescent sweets, and grown-up cookery at London's Savoy Hotel. Further, he knows when to underwrite and when to gloriously overwrite. His is a bittersweet account of life with a loving mother, but a poor cook, who is battling the asthma that will take her life, and a loving but distant father. Listening to this memoir revisits one's memories of food (good and awful) and even, perhaps, a coming to terms with one's own childhood memories. L.C. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Slater, celebrated in Britain for his food columns in London's Observer, recalls his childhood in great and moving detail, interweaving his hunt for oral gratification with prose portraits of his family. His mother, utterly devoted to him yet something of a kitchen klutz, could not make up for the physical abuse that burst from his conflicted father. Slater's mother's early demise and his father's remarriage to the family's cleaning woman did little to enhance the sensitive lad's self-image. What joy the boy found stemmed from occasional culinary successes out of his mother's kitchen and from an endless, stereotypically English cascade of sweets. Readers of Slater's accounts of eating out in the 1960s may come to believe that the British really invented fast food, something for which Americans generally shoulder blame. Slater's hunger for both food and human love are achingly recorded. American readers may find some of this memoir tedious and obscure since Slater obsesses over the seemingly boundless output of British candy factories, never employing a generic term when there is a regional trademarked noun at hand. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

A deliciously evocative story of childhood in 1960s suburban England from one of the United Kingdom’s best-loved writers, Nigel Slater

Toast is the truly extraordinary story of a childhood remembered through food. In each chapter, as Nigel Slater takes us on a tour of the contents of his family’s pantry—rice pudding, tinned ham, cream soda, mince pies, lemon drops, bourbon biscuits—we are transported…

His mother is a chops-and-peas sort of cook, exasperated by the highs and lows of a temperamental stove, a finicky little son, and the asthma that would prove fatal. His father is a honey-and-crumpets man with an unpredictable temper. When he is widowed, Nigel’s father takes on a housekeeper with social aspirations and a talent in the kitchen and the following years become a heartbreaking cooking contest for his affections. As he slowly loses, Nigel finds a new outlet for his culinary gifts and we witness the birth of a lifelong passion for food. Nigel’s likes and dislikes, aversions and sweet-toothed weaknesses, form a fascinating backdrop to this exceptionally moving memoir of childhood, adolescence, and sexual awakening.

With a new preface and glossary for American readers, this British bestseller and national award winner is sure to delight foodies and memoir enthusiasts on this side of the pond. Possessed of the subtlety and wit of Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and the disarming frankness of Anthony Bourdain’s page-turning Kitchen Confidential, Toast is a treat to be savored. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.