Book Review: The Bread and Butter Stories by Mary Norton
The Bread and Butter Stories
by Mary Norton
Published: 1998
Read: June 2007
Paperback, 272 pp
This is a collection of short stories and other pieces (fiction and non) written by Mary Norton during the '40s and '50s for magazines to earn her “bread and butter.” Even with the successes of The Borrowers and what later became Bedknobs and Broomsticks, I think I often forget that authors need to keep earning. Of this collection, I particularly liked “The Girl in the Corner,” a family’s observations of a blind girl in a train compartment on a long journey. It’s a beautifully written little vignette, and really touched me. “Take of Wormwood Seven Scruples” was another of my favourites, though completely different. This is a comic little piece about a 19th century book containing recipes for home remedies, wine, household cleaning solutions, etc. I particularly liked Norton’s description of the book’s instructions on making candied horehound:
‘Shake it over the pan, then give it a sudden flirt behind you; if done, the sugar will fly off like feathers.’ To where? The ‘sudden flirt behind you’ worries me. Why ‘behind you’? In a life dedicated, one might say, to the art of cooking, it has never once been suggested that I do anything ‘behind’ me. Anyway, I should be most grateful for any suggestions from readers who have mastered the art of candied horehound - or have mastered the art, as it well may be, of a sudden flirt.