Unveiling the Hidden Forces Shaping Our Relationship with Food: A Provocative Review of Amber Husain’s "Tell Me How You Eat"
When she’s invited by a family friend to serve as a chef for a retreat, Husain’s instinct is to resist; she does not want to literally feed the stereotype of the woman who keeps her mouth shut tight while lavishly pushing heaping plates at others in order to both control them and vicariously experience flavor. Still, she takes the gig. And while she’s not surprised that it’s unfulfilling, her telling is fresh and suspenseful; will this work? What will?
Always, she rejects the idea that all she needs to do is eat and cook and enjoy food and her problems will be solved. Husain knows that her lack of interest in food is not a personal failing, but a vital quest to rediscover conviction and meaning in a world that, for a post-Brexit British woman, continues to feel hopeless.
