Book Review: "The Feast" ed. by Simon Winder

I like to read odd books every now and again so one of the things I tend to do is buy a book I've never even heard of. I was looking for books on a used bookshop website and found someone selling this book. No idea what it was about, hadn't heard anything about it and I even reufsed to read the on-screen summary. I just bought it. This is about as adventurous as I am willing to get. Do this with food and I will be anxious as hell, often refusing to eat. Do this with my everyday life and I will actually have a panic attack. Do this with my coffee and you will probably summon a demon. But books are my safe space.

After some quotations by Dickens and Waugh, the book opens with Bram Stoker's Dracula in which supper is produced and served, only for the host to state that he does not actually eat supper. An atmospheric opening and familiar to us who have read Dracula, the book throws us into the countless possibilities for feasting that we are met with throughout the anthology. Another extract in this anthology by contrast is called Appetite and it is from Henry David Thoreau's Walden. He instead discusses how one could 'never be a glutton' if he appreciates flavours and sensations involving food. I enjoyed that in only a few pages we've gone from the countless possibilities of being served food to the fact that you could never be considered greedy for appreciating it.

One of my favourite pieces early on in the book is a poem by Julian Symons entitled Pub and it speaks of the way in which people in the 1940s, during the wartime would congregate and interact in the pub atmosphere. It tells the story of going to the pub, sitting around and laughing, drinking and eating - then going home having spent an incredible amount of time around people you like doing something you love. The atmosphere is probably at the forefront of this one as opposed to the actual eating but nonetheless, it is a brilliant poem.

But what would this anthology be without the chapter entitled The Tea-Party from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? Well, it would probably be a lot more boring. My all-time favourite chapter from a childhood classic, this book definitely shows its range by including something whimsical and fantastic amongst the Dickens, the Jonathan Swift and the more high-brow critiques. In a giant contrast, my favourite Orwell text is also included. Down and Out in Paris and London has many great passages about food, but the passage included here has been titled Hunger and Poverty and tells you the exact story of what the title suggests. If you haven't read Down and Out in Paris and London then can I suggest you pick yourself up a copy? It really is a fantastic book.

From John Dos Passos having Dinner in Manhattan to Jonathan Swift having Dinner in Lilliput there is a stark difference in the way the editor has presented the importance of food and eating. It seems that in the older tales, the focus is actually on the atmosphere concerning the table and its contents whether it be a tea-party or hogsheads. But the newer, more modern tales concern themselves more with the manners of those at the table - the crossing of legs, the straightening of backs and the sheer tension of sitting opposite someone who is now, no matter how familiar, entirely strange. It is an odd thing to notice but in the few pages between these two extracts, I couldn't help myself.

There really wouldn't be much of an anthology about eating, foods and the way we interact with them if the editor had not included Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. Most everyone who has studied this subject has either read all of, or at least part of, Goblin Market. It is a fantastic poem which draws so heavily on folklore to give us a raw and robust story of sisters and foods. It is in direct contrast to the poem that closes the anthology entitled: Idle and Light are Many Things You See... in which the poet speaks of the continuation and everlasting nature of foods in a way that leaves us almost wanting more.