Hilary Mantel * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Ī riveting and chilling account of the frightening events that took place in 1692 in a small town in Massachusetts when an oppressive, claustrophobic community turned upon itself, superstition fusing with score-settling. You want to understand the subject, and you want to meet the historian. Context is everything, and Schiff defines it she interrogates her sources, makes every detail count, and her style is intriguing - sharp-eyed, discriminating, crisp. But using the past as stand-in for the present often sells it short, and gives its complexities permission to elude us. Arthur Miller used the Salem story as a metaphor for the McCarthy era's paranoia. Was it like The Crucible? No, it was worse. Adolescent girls, denouncing their neighbours, began a fashion for denunciation it resulted in nineteen hangings, in torture, in the fracture of families and communities, and in the spectacle of a seven-year-old kept in miniature manacles. (Apr.Stacy Schiff's The Witches deals with a horror we assume we know, but don't: the moral panic that tore apart the towns of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. Agent: Holly Bemiss, Susan Rabiner Literary Agency. Like a giant bowl of spaghetti carbonara or tower of huevos rancheros (recipes included), this is a book that teenagers and parents will savor in equal measure. With each memory Knisley shares, she shows that life, like a good meal, should be savored and that all food-even junk food-is more than “just fuel.” For those uninitiated in the mysterious art of pickling, the nuance of cheese, or making sangria (yes, a couple cocktail recipes appear), Knisley’s candid storytelling, deadpan humor, and clear-line cartooning make the book entirely accessible, extinguishing the pretensions that sometimes predominate the culinary world.
Having grown up surrounded by delicious food, thanks to her gourmand father and earthy superchef mother, Knisley looks back on her childhood and adolescence through her roving palette and voracious appetite for new tastes and experiences. “When we eat, we take in more than just sustenance,” writes Knisley (French Milk) in this nostalgic and funny food-centric memoir, and it’s a fitting motto for the book and for anyone who takes even the slightest pleasure in cooking and, more importantly, eating.
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