#BlogTour ‘The Language Of Food ‘ by Annabel Abbs

About the book…

Eliza Acton, despite having never before boiled an egg, became one of the world’s most successful cookery writers, revolutionizing cooking and cookbooks around the world. Her story is fascinating, uplifting and truly inspiring.

Told in alternate voices by the award-winning author of The Joyce Girl, and with recipes that leap to life from the page, The Language of Food by Annabel Abbs is the most thought-provoking and page-turning historical novel you’ll read this year, exploring the enduring struggle for female freedom, the power of female friendship, the creativity and quiet joy of cooking and the poetry of food, all while bringing Eliza Action out of the archives and back into the public eye.

England 1837. Eliza Acton is a poet who dreams of seeing her words in print. But when she takes her new 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. England is awash with exciting new ingredients, from spices to exotic fruits. That’s what readers really want from women.

Eliza leaves the offices appalled. But when her father is forced to flee the country for bankruptcy, she has no choice but to consider the proposal. Never having cooked before in her life, she is determined to learn and to discover, if she can, the poetry in recipe writing. To assist her, she hires seventeen-year-old Ann Kirby, the impoverished daughter of a war-crippled father and a mother with dementia.

Over the course of ten years, Eliza and Ann developed an unusual friendship – one that crossed social classes and divides – and, together, they broke the mould of traditional cookbooks and changed the course of cookery writing forever.

My thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for the blog tour invite, and publishers Simon and Schuster for my gifted review copy of ‘The Language Of Food’ by Annabel Abbs, which is out on February 3rd!

What a glorious , divine novel which sweeps the modern reader into the early 19th century and presents, warts and all, the challenges which faced women, regardless of their class.

Beginning with an unthinkable betrayal, a cookery book full of purloined recipes which is handed, published, like a gift to one of the original creators, the novel returns to the very start of the relationship between Eliza Acton and Ann Kirby, lady and her undermaid, or rather, as I would like to think of them, co-creators of the original cookbook.

I think these days we all take it for granted that we can walk into a shop and purchase a cookery book, themed around a particular cuisine, perhaps, or the latest offering by a favourite celebratory chef.

However, in those days, things were very different and fate conspired to bring these two women together to revolutionise not just the kitchen, but the very fabric of society itself.

Eliza Acton, her father having lost his fortune and fled to France, her brother having done the same-but to Mauritius-and her sisters taking up positions as governesses’, is left with her mother to sell all that is sellable in their home, take what they can carry, and start again in a boarding house.

Having not the slightest clue how to run one and having to leave any of their treasured servants behind, Eliza picks the brains of the cook as to the difference between recipe books and what she enjoys cooking. In as much as a modern reader may become completely exasperated by reading a cook’s life story, before getting to the list of ingredients, Eliza, herself a published writer of poetry, recognises the limitations, lack of precision, and sheer boring nature of published recipes.

Still smarting from having her latest collection of poems turned down by her publisher, who has suggested-read, demanded-of her that she might turn her hand to cookery writing, she cannot see how her skills with words can translate to that of mere lists of ingredients.

However, her skills with words and creating emotions in her readers, are already in place, she is juts missing one vital ingredient.

And this is Ann, a teenage working class girl who cares for her increasingly mentally fragile mother, whilst her father drowns his sorrows in drink. Having returned from the Napoleonic wars with one leg and a raging thirst, it falls to Ann to do the majority of the work around the property. This includes keeping the local Vicar at bay who is concerned that her mother’s nocturnal rambling may affect the morals of the village.

Her brother, Jack, works in a gentleman’s club in London, sending her home the most outrageous news of the the stocks they get to use, things which those in London would take for granted. Ann’s dream of being a cook seems highly unlikely, however, as she begins to realise that her mother cannot be, literally, tied to her forever as it is doing neither of them any good, she reluctantly agrees to have her mother committed to an asylum and take sup a post as a undermaid with the Actons.

Ann has the palate and the skills to read and write, she is exactly the willing accomplice Eliza needed and there is this beautiful scene not long after they meet, where she tastes Eliza’s homemade lemonade and it brings her to tears for memories of her mother.

This is what Eliza wants to capture, she wants to rewrite cookery recipes as they currently stand and make use of the influx of ingredients which is coming into the UK at this point in history.

Eliza needs someone with a passion for food which she does not possess whilst Anne has the enthusiasm but lacks the resources and social standing.

With Eliza’s mother regarding her as having less value than a ‘clod of dirt’ , at the age of 36, she longs to have someone to listen to her and take her seriously. She is symptomatic of a time in history where women were seen as adjuncts to the men in their life so the notion of 2 women, both unwed, one with what is considered ‘bad blood’ in her veins, re-writing, literally, the history book on food is astonishing.

As these two women become more fully formed in the mind of the reader, the over arching plot is constantly in the back of your mind, who sabotaged them and how? Can you imagine how you would feel to see your life’s work literally stolen and passed off under another name?

An incredible feat which brings the names of two women to the fore which, personally, I was not aware of, despite knowing of Mrs Beeton’s Book Of Household Management, Annabel Abbs uses the mode of historical fiction to redress this balance. Eliza and Ann become real people, you are invested in their journey as they have left a legacy which continues to this very day, and influences any great cook who you could care to name.

Including , at the end, historical relevancies which add pathos to what you have just read, as well as recipes and mini biographies, these stud the text of ‘The Language Of Food’ like gorgeous jewelled fruit in a spiced bun. It is absolutely gorgeous, immensely satisfying in many ways and best devoured whole.

About the author…

Annabel Abbs is an English writer and novelist.

Her first novel, ‘The Joyce Girl’, was published in 2016 and tells a fictionalised story of Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce. It won the Impress Prize for New Writers, the Spotlight First Novel Award, was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award, the Caledonia Novel Award and the Waverton Good Read Award. The Joyce Girl was a Reader Pick in The Guardian 2016 and was one of ten books selected for presentation at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival, where it was given Five Stars by the Hollywood Reporter.

Twitter @simonschusterUK @RandomTTours