Not all of my favorite books about food are cookbooks. There are many non-fiction titles that discuss famous cooks or a specific ingredient or the history of certain cuisines. There are memoirs, essays, and books that take the scientific approach. And on occasion, there are novels that have food as the central plot focus. What are your favorite foodie fiction books?
Two of my favorites are by the same author, Ruth Ozeki, who explores agribusiness, environmentalism, family, community, gender, and the power of seed saving in her two novels My Year of Meats and All Over Creation. Both of these novels were ahead of their time, taking on subjects that later become the focus of best sellers such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma. My Year of Meats, which raises questions around ethically raising meat and bovine hormones in the food chain, was published in 1999, and All Over Creation which takes on agribusiness, biodiversity, and the importance of seed saving was published in 2004.
While Oziki's novels have a tendency toward more serious subjects, there are also shelves of crime fiction that often incorporate food-related puns (Crime Brûlée, Devil's Food Cake Murder, Beef Stolen-Off) and chick-lit titles whose protagonist usually owns a bakery/cupcake shop/catering company but still has time to look gorgeous and meet cute (but difficult and elusive) men.
Author Joanne Harris, who wrote the novels Chocolat, Five Quarters of the Orange, and Blackberry Wine is another well-known novelist who brings food into the forefront. There are also novels where the protagonist is a chef, novels about Chinese food, and novels where the heroine goes to Paris and eats a lot of delicious-sounding things.
For the most part, most of these books don't satisfy me. The food/chef/cupcake maker angle can seem forced and all too often, the author gets things wrong. (Wait a minute, you can't just whip up a batch of croissants in an hour!) My favorites are when food and cooking are woven thoughout the book, functioning as details that enhance the story such as this passage from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and these titles.
What food-focused fiction is on your bookshelf?
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I love the scene in Brothers Karamozov when Ivan remembers that Alyosha used to love cherry jam. Because of the cherry jam we know that Ivan – cold, distant, disagreeable Ivan – loves Alyosha and always has. And for the first time, Alyosha knows it too. It inspired me to make a recipe for quadruple vanilla ice cream with cherry chocolate swirl!
http://outoftheordinaryfood.com/2012/07/16/quadruple-vanilla-ice-cream-with-cherry-chocolate-swirl/
And I love the books of Joan Aiken. She's a children's author well-known in Britain and oddly neglected in America. She writes delicious books, in which people are cold and miserable, and then find themselves in a place of comfort with good food, be it a goose-filled cave with chestnut pancakes and honey liqueur, or a lovely room with plum cake and blackcurrant brandy. In Go Saddle the Sea she describes a Spanish salt-sprinkled pastry cake. I couldn't find such a recipe anywhere, so I invented one of my own, and it turned out delicious! I filled it with ground almonds and bittersweet chocolate and a bit of cinnamon...
http://outoftheordinaryfood.com/2013/02/13/salt-sprinkled-pastry-cake-with-chocolate-almond-filling/
I forgot to say that I loved My Year of Meat. Shocking, but very good.
And I'm sorry, I've gotten to thinking about it...is it okay if I post a few more? I love books and food, so this is exactly my favorite kind of question. I love to try to recreate recipes I read about.
I'd always been curious about Jane Austen's white soup - the soup that had to be made before there could be a ball at Netherfield. I did some research, and came up with this vegetarian version with white beans, almonds and cauliflower. Creamy, but cream-free! you garnish it with pistachio kernels and pomegranate seeds!
http://outoftheordinaryfood.com/2011/12/13/jane-austens-vegetarian-white-soup/
And I've always loved the scene in Our Mutual Friend (my favorite Dickens) in which Rogue Riderhood uses a slab of his giant meat pie as a plate upon which to eat the filling. It got me curious about a crust that sturdy. I discovered the hot water crust (or raised pastry) and I've made my own vegetarian version of that, too, which I fill with a deep mushroom pie.
http://outoftheordinaryfood.com/2011/11/01/hot-water-crust-pastry-vegetarian-style/
My favourite has to be Fannie Flagg's "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe", though I also love "The Anger of Aubergines" by Bulbul Sharma.
"Apricots on the Nile" by Colette Rossant is also quite nice though more a memoir than fiction.
I agree that fiction where the central idea is FOOD leaves me cold. The Epicure's Lament, by Kate Christensen, and The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman, were OK books but didn't really work for me, mostly because I didn't feel great about how food and foodie-ism functioned in the novels. Give me Ha Jin's descriptions of noodle vendors, or Hemingway on cheap white wine, or EF Benson's redcurrant fool from the Mapp and Lucia books, any day. (And Francie's pickle! The best, good mention of A Tree Grows above.)
I am part of a friendly blogger's food book club called the Kitchen Reader. Over the years we've read some great fiction with food. One was Blessed are the Cheesemakers by Sarah-Kate Lynch and another was The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen.
I love Ruth Ozeki!!! She has a new book!!!! Yippeee!!!!
I loved My Year of Meats. Such a compelling novel, for both the personal story and the food story.
One of my favorites is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, about a young girl who can taste the emotions of the maker in any food she eats. The book gets a little bizarre toward the end, but with such a supernatural central theme, what else would you expect?
The first one that comes to mind is "the last Chinese chef."
Don't forget about T.C. Boyle's The Road to Wellville!
I always feel in the mood for Like Water for Chocolate. Magical Realism and food go so well together. Sometimes when I can't find a good foodie fiction outlet, I cheat and just watch Babette's Feast.
I really liked Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy as a kid because of all the descriptions of food (also, it details how he grows a milk-fed pumpkin, which is neat). I should give it another read now as an adult.
What a brilliant post! I love foodie books and I've also been looking for a new read. I have to say, my all-time fave is anything by Tony Bourdain!!!
I enjoyed Ruth Reichl's book Garlic & Sapphires. It was a lot about her restaurant reviews, but mixed in recipes too. I remember it being such a fun read.
Oooh...I loved Like Water for Chocolate-that is one of my favorite books. More recently, I enjoyed The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.
Another vote for Anthony Bourdain!
White Truffles in Winter is a fiction based on Auguste Escoffier. It will make you hungry!
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The descriptions of mealtimes make me want to eat exactly like Almanzo's family did.
Michelle Maisto's Gastronomy of Marriage! http://theactorsdiet.com/2011/09/08/a-perfect-marriage/
Heartburn, by the late, great, Nora Ephron, is one of my favorite books. It's very witty and breezy and fun to read. Laugh out loud funny. (I also adore MFK Fisher's memoirs, but those are obviously non-fiction.)
Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee is one of my all time favorite books.
Mediterranean Summer by David Shalleck