Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love

[kklasten]

This wonderful essay by Lara Vapnyar cost me € 15.35. I was so intrigued by her ideas of imagining food that I thought she must be good. The book has been worth every cent I paid for it.

Ms Vapnyar, born in Russia and attending in school in 1979, was required to write an essay on a topic every student has come up against. Being granted a single wish whether by a fairy godmother or a Magi would seem to be international. Every child can write a few lines on that. But Ms Vapnyar was/is not just 'every child'.

To her teacher's horror she did not wish for world peace but for a magic pot which would cook any food she fantasised about, in a place as Russia was in those days possibly not so abstruse. The pot would have had a lot to do. Her knowledge of fruits and vegetables other than those encountered in her everyday life she gleaned from novels. And adult novels of the 19th century seem to have had their characters eating a lot of asparagus. She began to try to make a picture of what this was as she could not find it in any available encyclopedias. What did it look like? What texture did it have? What did it taste like? She constructed her own image of all the foods she so encountered and these included cheescake, oysters, mangos or even just kohlrabi.

On moving to the USA later on she was not exactly doomed to disappointment but in some cases very much to a rude awakening. After a while she began to wonder if may be that pot had been quite such a good idea and that maybe her teacher's suggestion might have been more sensible.

Do read the essay which I have outlined above and beg, borrow or buy the book with more lovely stories of food looked at from a different angle.

The essay:www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/27/news/25foodt001.php

The book: Lara Vapnyar's new collection of short stories is "Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love” and is available from your local bookseller for whatever your country demands for $ 20.00 U.S.A.