Playing Sardines [Paperback]

Michele Roberts (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 2001

A feast of short stories from a writer who relishes the sensual language of food and eating. They include the tales of a cook whose obsessive love turns hungry and dangerous; a fan who tries to get into a celebrity novelist's sheets; and a faddy eater thrown off-course by a miracle.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Michele Robert s' collection of short stories, which starts with the titular Playing Sardines is a wickedly gorgeous concoction of the sweet, bittersweet and downright sickly. Roberts has created each female narrator or heroine with as much care as any cook measuring out the ingredients for a rich chocolate mousse, and though not all the stories take food as their main theme, they leave the reader just as sated. Not surprisingly, France--its countryside, its cooking, Paris--takes a lead role in the stories, whether eating cordon bleu food from the perspective of a naive young English bride or roaming the streets of Paris seen through the older eyes of a 60-year-old. Stories which do dwell less on food, such as "Blathering Frights" and "A Bodice Rips" blackly and yet gently mock Robert s' own profession; creative writing courses and romantic novels are turned inside out with little twists of plot and extended metaphors. Michele Roberts has a light touch that makes these stories very readable, and her subtly insinuating tone makes the mockery and morbidity all the more horrific after each story has finished. Playing Sardines is a literary dish to be appreciated in small b Written in a prose as sharp as a Sabatier knife. GUARDIAN --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Half-English and half-French, Mich?le Roberts was born in 1949. DAUGHTERS OF THE HOUSE (1992) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the W.H. Smith Literary Award.

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Virago Press Ltd (June 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1860498140
• ISBN-13: 978-1860498145
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,096,778 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.