What a funny, fascinating and touching memoir this was. Grace Dent is well known as an acerbic tv presenter and columnist in well known newspapers. This is her story; from growing up in the working class town of Carlisle where her Mam would love nothing more than getting a bargain at the supermarket, to her dizzying climb to fame in London. This is a rags to riches story. But it is also so much more than that, Grace writes with such skill and unflinching honesty that the reader is sucked into the story page by page.
I’m a year younger than Grace and from just across the map, Newcastle. So the memories were so wonderfully accurate, I smiled and laughed in so many places. And the memories of food were so evocative; Grace’s Mam doing the ‘big shop’ resulted in a 20 minute trip down Memory Lane between my husband and I remembering the same.
Although Grace’s memoir does have food as its theme, as she reveals more of her life it becomes evident that it’s essentially a book about family. It has laughter and sadness throughout, coupled with an intoxicating glimpse of life as a journalist and tv presenter, and she writes so wonderfully well that by the end if it you’ll feel you could quite easily go and sit quite comfortably in the pub with her. For a pint 🍺 in Carlisle and a glass of champers 🍾 in London of course.
I’m a year younger than Grace and from just across the map, Newcastle. So the memories were so wonderfully accurate, I smiled and laughed in so many places. And the memories of food were so evocative; Grace’s Mam doing the ‘big shop’ resulted in a 20 minute trip down Memory Lane between my husband and I remembering the same.
Although Grace’s memoir does have food as its theme, as she reveals more of her life it becomes evident that it’s essentially a book about family. It has laughter and sadness throughout, coupled with an intoxicating glimpse of life as a journalist and tv presenter, and she writes so wonderfully well that by the end if it you’ll feel you could quite easily go and sit quite comfortably in the pub with her. For a pint 🍺 in Carlisle and a glass of champers 🍾 in London of course.