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"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Half-English and half-French, Michele Roberts was born in 1949. DAUGHTERS OF THE HOUSE (1992) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the W.H. Smith Literary Award.
Review:
Written in a prose as sharp as a Sabatier knife. * GUARDIAN * 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 *
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherVirago Press
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 186049935X
- ISBN 13 9781860499357
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages196
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Rating