Review: Bread & Chocolate by Philippa Gregory
Bread & Chocolate
by Philippa Gregory
Philippa Gregory is best known for her historical fiction novels, like The Other Boleyn Girl and The Other Queen ( win a copy today!) but she has written many short stories set in modern times for magazines and other publications. A selection of these tales, as well as several never before printed, were gathered together into the collection Bread & Chocolate.
I think one of the reasons the little book appealed to me was the sheer variety of the stories inside. Some of them are scary, with freaky supernatural occurrences. There’s a sensual-food story (like Chocolat if you ever read that; one of those books where the descriptions of food are mouthwatering and you can taste the words as you read) from which the title Bread & Chocolate comes from, wherein a famous chef renowned for her ‘wicked’ cakes tempts a priest while he’s on her cooking program to showcase the bread he bakes for his monastery. All but one of the stories take place in England, and several of them feel very “cozy” to me. By cozy I mean that there’s a celebration of domesticity; many of the stories focus on women who are stay-at-home wives or artist-types without out a 9-to-5 job, and even though each woman has her set of problems I can’t help but envy them, because there’s nothing I want less than to drive to an office or a shop every day and work and fight in the corporate rat race. But that’s not every story. A young anthropologist works on his ground-breaking study of the Nloko people which will launch him into stardom, never stopping to consider that the Nloko may have their own plans for him. One man cheats on his wife but she tricks him into staying; another man cheats but his wife gets revenge instead. There’s this wicked glee in the stories that occasionally pops up in Gregory’s novels, but she uses it very effectively here.
It is a real pity that Bread and Chocolate, Philippa Gregory’s collection of short stories, was never printed in the US. Thanks to Bookmooch.com I was able to get a copy of this rare book (rare in America, anyway) and I highly recommend it if you can find it.
To read more about Bread & Chocolate, buy it or add it to your wishlist, click here.