I grew up in a small Northern town in the 1960s rather than the 1980s but still so many of Grace Dent's memories were the same as mine - playing outside almost all the time, coming home for meals that finished with Instant Whip as a treat. I didn't recognise all the foods but enough to make me wish that my memory was as good as hers, reading this memoir brought so many memories back.
This is a very good book, funny and poignant as Grace recounts her father's slide into dementia (something else I have in common with her). Recommended.

I’ve got to admit prior to receiving this copy of Hungry I only knew Grace as the formidable food critic off Masterchef but she has had quite the career! This book had me howling in parts and jogged my memory for some brilliant reminiscing, making me feel warm and good inside (until the end which had me blubbing).

Although I was born in the early 80s and not the 70s I could really identify with the bizarre food choices back then, everything was fried in crisp and dry and over salted, Kellogg’s multipacks were a huge treat and I also still love marrow fat peas. Going to the off licence, pinching the News of the World supplement and crazy home improvements while you were at school - it was like I was reading about my own childhood home alongside the odd family secrets and playing out with little boundaries!

I really loved reading this, hats off to Grace for holding it all together life can be proper shit at times. This book is thoroughly deserving of 5🌟

A trip down memory lane for growing up in the 80 and 90's. All manner of foods that are an integral part of growing up. The young ambition and nerve of Grace's early twenties. The class distinction because of accent and how this was overcome. Biind faith and holding her nerve letting talent shine through. All set against the background of family, ailing parents and the pull between career, financial necessity and escaping from an emotional whirlwind of parental responsibility.
An excellent read.

"My childhood - in fact, almost all British childhoods in the 1970s and 80s - contains a lot of mince."

I absolutely loved reading Grace's memoir! As a perpetually hungry child myself, I felt that I had found a kindred spirit in this acclaimed food writer who loves beige food and the comforts of a good spaghetti bolognaise! I have enjoyed reading Grace's restaurant reviews in The Guardian for some time and it was fascinating to read about her journey from unpaid intern to award-winning journalist and broadcaster. I have always felt that Grace is someone who knows how to eat and doesn't hold stock with pretension over substance - and I was right! Grace has a wonderful way of poking fun and bringing things back down to earth: "I had no interest in anything as unfeasible as physics. When Heston Blumenthal shows up making a risotto with a Dyson Airblade and a conical flask of formaldehyde, I still think: Use a pan, mate. Stop dicking about."

Grace's book covers not just her career but also her childhood and growing up in Carlisle. The passages where she describes her family life and how food bonded them together was so relatable! Food brings us together every day for breakfasts before school, lunches on Sundays and dinners where only a hot cottage pie can bring comfort after a long day. The hardest parts to read were the final few chapters where Grace describes her father's quickening decline into dementia; honestly, I finished the book with tears rolling down my face, the writing was so heartfelt and a touching tribute to her dad.

This is a really excellent memoir. Warm, compelling and relatable, as well as hilarious and heart-breaking by turns. I tore through it and was sad to finish.

I'm always relieved when Grace Dent is one of the judges on Masterchef. You know that you're going to get an honest opinion from someone whom you sense does real food rather than fine dining most of the time. You also ponder on how she can look so elegant with all that good food in front of her. I've often wondered about the woman behind the media image and Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More is a stunning read which will make you laugh and break your heart in equal measures.

She was born in Carlisle in 1973. Her father was in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and her earliest memory is of walking away from the NAAFI with him in 1976. He was Liverpool born and bred and you occasionally catch a trace of the Scouse accent in Grace Dent's voice. Liverpool genes are like a rogue pair of red knickers in the washing machine with your whites. They leave a trace. Her mother was the Amazon who held the family together. It was a second marriage for both of them and whilst her father would regularly tell her she was his only little girl, Grace would gradually unpick the story of Jackie and Tina from his earlier marriage and then another son. Her father told you what he wanted you to know and was adept at avoiding questions he didn't want to answer.

Grace and her father would regularly make sketty together. Sketty was her father's way of saying spaghetti - and it was delicious. Food played a big part in Grace's childhood. She has memories of the opening of the ASDA superstore, which most people in Currock would remember more vividly than the death of Princess Diana. It changed lives. Going there was an outing, particularly if you could stock up on reduced items at the end of the day. The yellow WHOOPS! stickers were hunted down and loaded into the trolley. It's hard to avoid the thought that it wasn't in any way a healthy diet.

School wasn't a priority, but Grace was clever and almost despite herself, she went to Stirling University to read English Literature but she wanted to be in London when she graduated. Her steady rise through the world of magazines (Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan), into being a much-respected restaurant critic and television personality hid a dark, personal worry - the state of her parents' health. For some time her father had been 'acting strangely' and it was gradually becoming apparent that he had dementia. Getting a diagnosis was difficult: nurses and doctors persisted in talking to her father (rather than the family) and he was clever enough to make everything appear to be fine. Grace's mother was suffering from cancer and the treatments she was receiving left her exhausted and unable to cope. Grace needed to spend most of her time in Cumbria to look after her parents and restaurant reviews had to be done as occasional forays.

I read Hungry in one sitting: it was just too good to put down. It's candid: nothing appears to be 'glossed over' and I loved it. I loved too that it's inspiring: she didn't get to where she is on the back of a double-barrelled name, public school and a top university. She got there through hard work and determination but didn't forget her parents. There's no suggestion that she thought of them as a burden but what she has to say about the situation is heart-breaking and took me back to the final years of my parents' lives when I had similar problems. It was almost painful. I'd like to thank the publishers for making a copy of Hungry available to the Bookbag.

Grace Dent is a journalist, author, food critic and appears on television programmes such as Masterchef The Professionals in which she always enlivens proceedings!! Grace tells her fascinating story backwards and forwards in time from childhood to the present.

I absolutely love this memoir. It has all the essential ingredients, it’s funny, emotional and sad in places, it’s relatable and resonates and I like how she is self deprecating about her success. It makes you feel nostalgic too as childhood memories are peppered with food and television references, parental comments (I suspect we all got the same recycled ones) that takes you back to your own younger years. Some comments made me laugh out loud - Brownie badges!!! That made me laugh so much with my own laboured attempts to sew a button on a piece of fabric (I’m dangerous with a needle) for an utterly pointless but must have badge!! The lack of food choices when growing up resonates, It was Christmas plenty and rest of the year famine at our house!!! No wonder I’m food obsessed! The Dent household has a much better deal! Cut price too! The purple Cadbury’s wrapper - happy days. Her parents are lovely, you can see where she gets her wit from and this is what makes this very successful lady so grounded with her ‘working class’ Carlisle roots keeping her feet firmly on the ground. She charts her increasingly successful career and absolute kudos to her as she seizes opportunities and goes for it which I find admirable. I love her story of her relationship with food and I think most of us would find it very relatable. I like how she sees that some food trends are frankly ridiculous and I’d love to share a meal and memories with her she’d be great craic! I love how she and her brother are able to laugh their way through the crisis of ageing parents with failing health as humour sustains her through hard times. This part of her story resonates so much as it’s an almost mirror image of my own parental experiences and it makes me laugh and cry at the same time! The end of the book, well, I defy anyone to have a dry eye.

Overall, an excellent memoir. She’s real, she’s funny, often acerbically so, I love her shoulders back and chin up ‘like Aunty Frieda’ approach to life. Thank you Grace Dent for a marvellously entertaining trip down memory lane, I’m with you in solidarity with your parents and yes, we are all food critics at heart even if it’s only oven chips tonight.

With thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins/Non Fiction for the much appreciated arc.

I absolutely loved this book. It's a nostalgic memoir by Grace who was born in the 70's. I howled with laughter and cringed with embarrassment at some of the things, mainly because she was describing MY LIFE! Maybe all 70's kids did the same thing. I loved all the references to the foods through the decades! It brought back some lovely memories. It's one of those books you don't want to end and still want more after you have read it. Loved it!

What could be better, I ask, than a working-class Northern lass, with a love of good food, a cracking sense of humour and a real warmth about her, writing a memoir? Living a mere twenty minutes from Grace Dent’s hometown (city, really) of Carlisle, Cumbria, I felt this came at a time when we all need a little pick me up, and I found this fit the bill perfectly. Split between eleven chapters and a narrative shifting between multiple time frames ranging from girlhood right through to adulthood and is chock full of memories of her life, and both amusing and heartwarming anecdotes as well as some moving and more monumental one's, all which shaped her as a person.

It's one of the most fascinating, engaging and soul-baring memoirs I've had the pleasure to read, and I looked forward to dipping into it more each evening under a soft blanket with a cup of hot chocolate. It's inspirational and emotionally-resonant and at times it really touched me; it had me laughing, crying and nodding along in agreement. A cosy, entertaining and food-filled book; some of the descriptions had my mouth-watering, even for food I don't even enjoy - that's quite a feat. Accessible, relatable and impressive in its scope, I learned a lot about a local lassie done good. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Mudlark for an ARC.

I adored this book. If you are familiar with Grace Dent's writing from her restaurant columns you will know how funny and sharp she is. Reading this memoir was like a brilliant trip down memory lane for me, as it will be for anyone who grew up in the Eighties and Nineties, a time before internet but with all new shiny processed food. I have never longed for a Findus Crispy pancake as much as after reading this. Grace also talks about serious things, her dad developing dementia and how hard it is feeling the push pull of your London life versus your roots telling you what a good daughter should do. And her description of faking it til you make it, slapping on big hair and an attitude to cover up any insecurities will resonate with a lot of women.

I am a huge fan of Grace Dent's Guardian column so I was really looking forward to reading her memoir. Grace tells her story from growing up in 70s and 80s Cumbria to becoming one of our much loved food critics. I absolutely adored this memoir and raced through it in a day. I am a similar age to Grace so really related to all the food and cultural references of the 70s and 80s. Hungry is told with so much warmth and humour and I felt that I was right there growing up in the Dent household. It is a memoir about so much more than food- family relationships and secrets, class and becoming successful. Grace's relationship with her dad is told movingly and lovingly and I finished the book feeling a real sense of joy and hope.

I would highly recommend this memoir.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital ARC

Hungry is an account of growing up in the 70's and 80's and being of a similar age, I felt wonderfully nostalgic as the writer recalls the food she grew up eating, mainly beige but interspersed with the wonderful treats we coveted such as butterscotch Angel Delight, neapolitan ice cream and Rover's assorted biscuits. The stodgy school dinners that got us through the horrors of school, and the freedom we had to play out without fear.

The advent of superstores hailed vast choice at affordable prices and like children everywhere at this time, the highlight of the week was on the day of the 'big shop'. Entering teenage years, wearing Heather Shimmer lipstick and necking Thunderbird, able to gain access to clubs without the need for fake ID. An innocent time in many respects, but also a time where mistakes made were not documented on social media and therefore, left behind as time passed.

Grace Dent always dreamed of being a writer, and she documents her rise from Chat magazine, to the Mirror to becoming a successful novelist, food critic and broadcaster. Feeling somewhat underqualified, she nevertheless makes a success of being a critic on Masterchef: The Professionals, and becomes The Guardian's restaurant critic. Recognised and commended for her work, she manages to hide her personal sadness behind her up-do and fake eyelashes. Her beloved Mam is fighting cancer; her father is descending into the fog of vascular dementia. Moving home to help care for her parents is tough, but there are moments that are darkly amusing - it is finding the humour in the darkest of situations that keeps us going.

Hungry is a wonderfully nostalgic read, and a fascinating account of a working-class girl's ascent into the glamourous world of journalism and television - never truly feeling she quite fits in, but blagging it all the way to the top.

I was absolutely thrilled when I was approved to read this. I LOVE reading Grace Dent's reviews for The Guardian, so I knew I would enjoy this. I didn't realise how moving I would find it - the stories of the relationship between her and her father I found particularly engaging.

On a day when I was made redundant, reading this made me laugh - thank you Grace!

This is the story of how working class Cumbrian lass, Grace, got to become a leading food critic. It charts her early life and experiences of food. There is a lot of wit and funny comment along the way. as Grace says
"when something you write strikes a chord and ends up widely read it feels a bit, like in your brain at least, like being loved. Particularly when you write silly things. Clearly silly things won't win you as many prizes as being serious; however you only have to write once at a silly frequency that makes a stranger really snort with laughter and then you're in their hearts, just a little bit forever"

This is true , I did snort with laughter frequently (see for example the descriptions of Christmas dinner . She blames Wham's Last Christmas video for upping Christmas expectations "there is no scene in that video where George explains to Pepsi and Shirlie that there's no room at the six-person dinner table, so they'll be eating their turkey on a pull out wallpapering bench, sitting on deckchairs"

Whilst acknowledging how "good restaurants change how you view eating forever" Grace isn't above trying to skewer pretentious restaurants/chefs, like the restaurant that serves a lot of courses on washing lines or lobster in a tool box. My favourite was the course that was a "political comment on AIDS in Asia"

Along the way Grace encounters celebrities and people she would never have any social contact with had she stayed in Cumbria. However her trips to Cumbria become more frequent as her parents' health deteriorates.
There the "dining" experience is more about a scone in a garden centre or Wetherspoons etc. Food and that bar of Cadbury's Milk chocolate that united her with her family is juxtaposed with her very different experiences on Master Chef etc.

The autobiographical element dominates the last few chapters although there are some amusing anecdotes about dressing up as a Christmas Pudding for a magazine shoot. I was glad of the Epilogue to update me on her family.

A book that is as warm and as a home cooked roast dinner that also has comment on social class and the importance of food and family