Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen by Rebecca May Johnson (6/6/23)

“An intense, thought-provoking enquiry into the very nature of cooking.”  -- Nigella Lawson

“One of the most original food books I’ve ever read, at once intelligent and sensuous, witty, provoking and truly delicious.”  -- Olivia Laing

A bracingly original, revelatory debut that explores cooking and the kitchen as sources of pleasure, constraint and revolution, by a rising star in food writing

This joyful, revelatory work of memory and meditation both complicates and electrifies life in the kitchen.

Why do we cook? Is it just to feed ourselves and others? Or is there something more revolutionary going on?

In Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking -- that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books -- as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control.

Small Fires shows us the radical potential of the thing we do every day: the power of small fires burning everywhere.

About the Author Rebecca May Johnson has published essays, reviews and nonfiction with Granta, Times Literary Supplement and Daunt Books Publishing, among others, and is an editor at the trailblazing food publication Vittles. Small Fires is her first book.

FURTHER PRAISE FOR SMALL FIRES

“A rewarding book that stayed with me -- and, like all brilliant food writing, it made me think twice about what I choose to eat and who I eat it with... a brave, honest book.”  -- Sunday Times

“I loved this genre-busting book. Shows that cooking can be a wild kind of magic.”  -- Bee Wilson

“Smart, creative and thoughtful. Confounds our expectations of what food writing can be.” -- Ruby Tandoh

“Liberating… a new way to write about food.”  -- Jonathan Nunn

“At the start of her first book, writer, academic and fearless boundary-basher Johnson confides a desire to “blow up the kitchen”. Small Fires does exactly that, rebuilding something epic from morsels of funny memoir, acute social criticism and food writing the likes of which you’ll never have read before. Taking its prompts from 10 years spent cooking in as many different kitchens, it reclaims that domestic space as one of intensely physical thought. An ingredients list would run to fortune cookies and poetry by Rilke, a serving of “bad news potatoes” (“for one, obviously”) and apron strings, both literal and inescapably metaphoric. Rich in pleasure and revelation, this is a deceptively svelte work whose invigorating pages feel spattered with hot oil and citrus splashes.”  -- Guardian

“Small Fires is a radical and lively critical analysis of what it really means to cook. Johnson writes in a bold first-person, which is in turn both conversational and poetic (there are even passages in list-like verse). She quotes often – from food writers, poets and philosophers – and writes generously, sharing poignant moments from her cooking life, and laying out sharp critiques as an invitation for readers to disagree.” – The New Statesman

“Small Fires is a manifesto for reclaiming cooking as an intellectual act... a rewarding book that stayed with me — and, like all brilliant food writing, it made me think twice about what I choose to eat and who I eat it with... a brave, honest book.”  -- Sunday Times

“Small Fires possesses an intellectual fleet footedness and exuberance akin to the writing of Deborah Levy or Rebecca Solnit, as sentences skip between mischievous punning and impassioned agitation... the enthusiasm of the writing here is generous, embracing and emboldening.”  -- iNews.co.uk

"A manifesto for kitchen liberation and the radical possibilities of eating."  -- Refinery 29