The Language of Food by Annabel Abbs explores the power of female friendship, the poetry of food and the creativity and quiet joy of cooking through recipes that leap to life from the page.
Eliza Acton is a poet who dreams of seeing her words in print. When she takes her manuscript to a publisher, she’s told that ‘poetry is not the business of a lady’. Instead, they want her to write a cookery book. When her father is forced to flee the country for bankruptcy, she has no choice but to consider the proposal. Never having cooked before, she’s determined to learn and to discover the poetry in recipe writing. To assist her, she hires the impoverished seventeen-year-old Ann Kirby. Over the next ten years Eliza and Ann develop an unusual friendship and together they break the mould of traditional cookbooks and change the course of cookery writing forever.
‘A sensual feast of a novel, written with elegance, beauty, charm and skill in a voice that is both lyrical and unique.’ Santa Montefiore
