Small Fires

As a lover of food, and food (non)fiction. I was excited to read Small Fires, not quite knowing what to expect I dived in and quickly got sucked into the world of spattering tomato sauce.

Small Fires is not like any other food book I have read, in fact, not like any book I've read. Rebecca May Johnson manages to bring the passion of food and ingredients to life using all of our senses, combined with astonishing literature references.

Small Fires is full of intelligence, but also the honesty of what appear to be mental health struggles which are written in a very relatable manner.

Having bookmarked over 10 pages, it's fair to say this book left me viewing the world of food very different than ever before. The author takes us on a journey of feminism; the role of a women in the kitchen. But also how recipes provide a starting point of a journey, every repeated recipe being slightly different based on your mood, your guests and the ingredients available.

A beautiful, thought provoking book that is bound to make you want to: purchase all the literature referenced and grab a bowl of pasta.

I can't help but wonder... who is the 'You' so lovingly mentioned in the book. I'll have to read it again to uncover.

I don't think I've ever read a memoir quite like this - a mix of beautiful food writing and musings on greek mythology.

This book will make you hungry! The food writing is extremely evocative, Rebecca May Johnson is very gifted in this department and reading it not only made me very hungry, but made me specifically crave what she was writing about. The chapter detailing the many times she has made a certain recipe throughout her life was an absolute joy to read and I will no doubt be attempting the same recipe since I can't get it out of my head!

At times it did feel a bit disjointed but it wasn't long before I was pulled back in again as some delicious morsel was being described.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the opportunity to review this book!

Journalist and essayist Rebecca May begins by telling us she wants to look at cooking in a different way, a revolutionary way of thinking about the everyday work in the kitchen if you will. Throughout her ten-year cooking life she’s repeated ‘the recipe’, serving it to a multitude of friends, lovers and acquaintances, sometimes sticking to it, sometimes making additions, sometimes changing the method depending on who she’s cooking for and what she has available. It’s her epic, the kitchen equivalent of The Odyssey which she frequently references, and the bedrock of her cooking.

Idiosyncratic, erudite and full of digressions, Small Fires sets about rescuing cooking from a dismissive patriarchy. It’s quite angry at times but also very funny. For Johnson, the kitchen is often a place of joy, a room to dance around to music as sausages fry in the pan. Cookery books are to be spattered with oil and sauce not left pristine and untouched on the shelf. An intriguing and surprising book, Small Fires is both a celebration of what is an everyday experience for many of us and a very personal exploration of what that experience means.

Rebecca co-founded the literary food salon ‘Voices at The Table’ and ‘Sitting Room’, a long-running series of readings in people’s houses and public spaces. In 2017 she created the Food Memory Bank, a digital project to collect public memory about food and eating. Since 2011, Rebecca has kept the online recipe diary, Dinner Document.

In Small Fires she plays with the form of memoir told through essays by incorporating recipes alongside beautiful poetic passages encapsulating events in her life and their relation to food and cooking, It's an absolutely delightful read featuring mouth watering prose that will have you running to the kitchen. The lengthy descriptions of the endless varieties of tomato sauce has inspired me to try to create my own spin on the dish which I look forward to future experimentation for years to come.