Toast

Even though we don’t share common experiences such as country, popular food brands, history, growing up in the same time period, or music, while reading Nigel Slater’s Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger, I somehow related to an understandably persnickety and finicky boy. I had to find out the real story behind the movie and unsurprisingly, the book is more complex than its cinematic counterpart. Food is to Nigel Slater what music is to Nick Hornby: an avenue to memories, his biography in something other than words and a medium to judge other people. I hope that he continues to write more than cookbooks, but I will not hold my breath. Toast, a poignant autobiography, may be the only chance that readers have to learn more about the author’s life.