Hungry: The Highly Anticipated Memoir from One of the Greatest Food Writers of All Time

by Grace Dent

Paperback, 2021

Status

Available

Call number

920

Genres

Collection

Non-Fiction

Publication

Mudlark (2021), 304 pages

Description

WINNER OF THE FORTNUM & MASON DEBUT FOOD BOOK AWARD 2021 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 LAKELAND BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Extraordinary. Vivid, irreverent, heartbreaking.' NIGEL SLATER 'So funny and so delicious. I could eat it.' DAWN O'PORTER 'Delicious.' THE OBSERVER From Frazzles to Foie Gras: a memoir of wanting more. From an early age, Grace Dent was hungry. As a little girl growing up in Currock, Carlisle, she yearned to be something bigger, to go somewhere better. Hungry traces Grace's story from growing up eating beige food to becoming one of the much-loved voices on the British food scene. It's also everyone's story - from treats with your nan, to cheese and pineapple hedgehogs, to the exquisite joy of cheaply-made apple crumble with custard. It's the high-point of a chip butty covered in vinegar and too much salt in the school canteen, on an otherwise grey day of double-Maths and cross country running. It's the real story of how we have all lived, laughed, and eaten over the past 40 years. Warm, funny and joyous, Hungry is also about love and loss, the central role that food plays in all our lives, and how a Cadbury's Fruit 'n' Nut in a hospital vending machine can brighten the toughest situation.… (more)

Media reviews

The Guardian

In Hungry (Mudlark), the restaurant critic Grace Dent tells of her early life in Carlisle, and her relationship with her father, who would cook her "sketty" – his name for spag bol – when she was a child. Tender and witty, the book is both a love-letter to George, whose eventual decline from

dementia she recounts, and the food that brought them together.

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The Observer

Hungry is a story about food, class and families and the distance travelled between a terraced house in Carlisle and multimillion-pound London restaurants that quake at your arrival. Above all, it’s a gorgeous, unsentimental tribute to the relationship between Grace Dent and her father, George.

User reviews

LibraryThing member nuttybooklady

I do not mind admitting that until I saw this book, I had never heard of Grace Dent, but this is because I had never read any of her work or watched the television programmes that she has taken part in. However, I was very touched by her story and in the future I will be looking out for her.
One of

the main reasons that I enjoyed her book was because it reminded me of my own youth. Although I am several years older than Grace, I can still identify with the lifestyle and food that was available to working class people during the seventies. I could also identify with the changes that people made to their diets during the 1980s when supermarkets became much bigger and offered more food at much cheaper prices. As stated in the book, many of these foods were to prove to be very bad for the nation`s health with the majority of people eating too much fat and sugar during this time.
Grace`s memoir is a true story of how a young working class woman worked (and played ) hard, to get where she is today.

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LibraryThing member pgchuis

I found this generally amusing, and also moving towards the end.

LibraryThing member thewestwing

I picked this book up from the library on a whim as I saw some rave reviews about it on social media. I vaguely know of Dent from TV but have never read her columns so I didn’t know what the writing would be like. She’s excellent at making recalled memories into tangible stories and I loved the

entire book. Great memoir.

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