Unwrapping the Unexpected: Why Eurie Dahn’s ‘Snack’ Is the Must-Read Surprise of the Year
I thought about my grandmother’s pantry that always held the blue cardboard canisters of Planter’s Cheez Balls. Much like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, they leave that signature orange-dusted fingers and probably don’t contain a single natural ingredient. I still talk with my cousins about how amazing it was that we got to eat them, how it reminds us of our grandmother, now gone. Decades later, I took great delight in telling my son about them and letting him taste them.
The brilliance of Snack and all the Object Lessons books lies in their ability to encourage us to step away from our devices, see ordinary things in the world through a different lens, and notice more. As Dahn says in her introduction: “In writing about snacks, I am writing about affective connections, about affiliations, memory, and forms of nourishment, such as love.”
