Unwrapping the Unexpected: Why Eurie Dahn’s ‘Snack’ Is the Must-Read Surprise of the Year
The category of snacks is capacious, changeable, and culturally, historically, and intensely individually dependent. This book, like all food books, is the author’s curriculum vitae—my account of who I am and what made me, in a physiological sense and an emotional and mental one as well. Of course, I could talk about these subjects in relation to meals but I focus on snacks because, somewhat contradictorily, (a) they are seen as trivial and unserious and (b) they are an important part of my childhood and those of others. In writing about snacks, I am writing about affective connections, about affiliations, memory, and forms of nourishment, such as love.
