Toast

Just finished reading Toast by Nigel Slater. Honestly, this book was just a bit strange. I can't even remember how it got on my list but sticking with my thought to try to work from the bottom of the list up, I ordered it from the library. I had a hard time getting started with it and almost considered giving up, which is hard for me to do once I've started a book. So after a rough start I managed to get through it as quickly as possible to be able to move on.

The beginning of the book is actually quite sweet. The concept is the author telling the story of his childhood through memories of food. This actually seems like a nice idea to start with. There are no chapters, just sections marked by subtitles, usually the name of some food item. I liked the author's memories through food. The childhood stories always having some sort of food associated with them. I was able to relate to this part of the book.

I can certainly think of memories in my childhood associated with food. Trips with my dad always evoke memories of bagels in New York or filling pasta at a hotel in Toronto. In fact it's not even so much the pasta I remember, its the free cheap plastic key chains that we got for being under whatever age, that came free with dinner. My brother always got lime green and I got a neon pink. I also remember in Toronto this wonderful restaurant that we went to that you could get anything you wanted. You got a sheet of paper when you walked in and you took it around with you to different stations where they stamped what you had ordered to charge you later.

I also think of "clouds" at my grandmas house. Eating them and also learning to make them with my grandmother. I remember sitting around with my aunts and cousins filling up on the fresh cooked dough. I think of a trip to San Francisco with my mom where I ate lunch crepes stuffed with pesto chicken. I am drooling now at the computer...

Anyways, back to Slater's story, I get the concept. It's easy to remember your childhood through the foods and feelings associated with that food. He lost me mid way through the book though. It began to morph into his adolescence and not just memories of family and adolescence, but the hormones raging sexual adolescence. Somehow the book ends with him in his 20s and the last 1/3rd of the book not so much about the good and bad of his childhood, but about his first sexual encounters with both men and women.

It seems as though the book is childhood memories through food and then bam sexual revolution through food. Strange is really the best way I can describe it. The other thing is, Slater has a forward to the book where he wonders aloud if his American audience will be able to relate as much as his British audience did. I'm not sure if his being British and the book being published in the US has anything to with my confusion at the strangeness of the book. I think my confusion is based on the fact that the book is really two different books in one.

Current Read: How to Understand Men Through Their Dogs by Wendy Diamond