On food in fiction – guest post by Sue Lawrence

Posted on February 13, 2024

On food in fiction: Former masterchef winner, food writer and historical novelist Sue Lawrence thinks carefully about how she can incorporate the tastes, textures and smells that would prevail in her historical settings to lend authenticity and atmosphere to her books. Such details can be as important as characters, place and storytelling.

Sue often imagines her way into scenes through her knowledge of historical recipes, the foods that were available during the period in the places she sets the action, and cooking techniques her characters would have been familiar with. As she is currently preparing to deliver a workshop at Aberdeen’s Granite Noir literary festival on this very subject (her workshop is sold out!), she kindly agreed to contribute this guest post for us: food for thought for both writers and readers.

On food in fiction

In my previous five novels, I have used food sometimes to comfort, sometimes to control, sometimes to taunt; sometimes, even, to kill.

In Lady’s Rock, my sixth novel, though the setting is the Scottish islands in the sixteenth century, the problems of family and marital relationships resemble those we know today. When my main character, Catherine Campbell, discovers the plans her husband Lachlan Maclean has for their child, she decides that drastic measures are the only solution. And if this entails accumulating local knowledge of potentially poisonous plants, then so be it.

Celebrations

Food in fiction has been used to celebrate: think of the cloutie dumpling ‘sugared and fine’ in Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic Sunset Song, or the magnificent roast goose in Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir. Foodstuffs have provided a means of heightening emotions and passions hitherto unknown: think of the fabulous scene where quails in rose petal sauce are served in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate and the dish transforms all the characters’ lives forever. Or the elaborate and exquisite dinner in Babette’s Feast, by Isak Dinesen, another transformative meal.

Setting the scene

Food can also be used as a means of giving the reader a sense of place. Just as Lewis Grassic Gibbon could only have used cloutie dumpling as the centrepiece at a wedding in rural Aberdeenshire, so Iain Banks describing the simple breakfast rowie (also known as ‘butterie’) places his novel Stonemouth very firmly in Aberdeenshire. The fish in Ingrid Persaud’s Love After Love – cascadoux – is popular in Trinidad, and the evocative description of her cooking it transports the reader immediately to the tropical heat of the Caribbean.

Emotion-building

Deployed wisely, food can build emotions in fiction to add colour to a character or to enhance the tension and the passions in a scene. Used as a welcome comfort and as nourishment, it can serve to keep a narrative grounded. Used as a poison, the result can be an entire family overwhelmed in grief, causing such pain that there can seem no way out.

And that’s when the reader must trust in the author to navigate through the hardships or torments that might follow.  Whether food is used benignly or with malignant intent in a novel, it is in the author’s hands as they create something – hopefully delicious – for the reader’s delectation.  And it may even leave the reader wanting second helpings.