Small Fires

Reviews / Votes

Small Fires is a manifesto for reclaiming cooking as an intellectual... 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 * 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... Rich in pleasure and revelation. * Observer * 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 * i news * Insightful, radical, beautiful -- Rachel Roddy * Guardian * An intense, thought-provoking enquiry into the very nature of cooking, which stayed with me long after I finished it -- Nigella Lawson One of the most original food books I've ever read, at once intelligent and sensuous, witty, provoking and truly delicious, a radical feast of flavours and ideas. -- Olivia Laing Liberating... a new way to write about food -- Jonathan Nunn (Vittles) Small Fires is like nothing else I have read. Truly unique, truly unusual, it weaves together cooking, dancing, and the Odyssey in a riveting, and moving exploration of what counts as knowledge. It had me rethinking what a recipe is, what cooking is, what is 'I' and what is 'you'. It is a book that asks profound and serious questions while also being musical, erotic, and deeply pleasurable. Being in the company of Rebecca May Johnson's voice -- companionable, intimate, questioning -- was a sheer delight. I didn't want it to end. -- Katherine Angel Spellbinding and completely unique, Small Fires made me think about my place in the kitchen in ways I never have before. Will be thinking about its lessons for a very long time -- Annie Lord, author of Notes on Heartbreak A truly special, boundary breaking book about desire, friendship, food & freedom. It feels like a whole new genre is being created through her language -- Rebecca Tamas I loved it start to finish - bliss to be in the kitchen with Rebecca May Johnson, with one eye firmly on the movable pleasures of cooking and eating, always... One for you if you like A Ghost in the Throat, The Argonauts, MFK Fisher and fried foods of any and all descriptions -- Ana Kinsella, author of Look Here This is a simply brilliant book. Raucously funny and searingly intelligent. It will make you wonder why writing about food and writing about anything aren't more like this. There are often calls made to take a particular issue seriously or do it justice, especially those that have been treated unseriously or unjustly. Rebecca May Johnson shows what it might mean to take food - its preparation, its consumption, and how we relate to it - seriously -- Amelia Horgan, author of Lost in Work: Escaping Capitalism Small Fires is a smart, creative and thoughtful book: it challenges us to think more about how and why we cook, and confounds our expectations of what food writing can be -- Ruby Tandoh Destined to become essential reading for anyone interested in writing about food... Bold, beautiful, daring... It is a book that changed me -- Rachel Roddy Small Fires is a tender, electric, intimately transformative work. Rebecca May Johnson has written her own glowing epic, reshaping the notion of the recipe as a text alive with possibility. In her hands, recipes become memory objects, acts of translation, expansive spaces full of feeling -- Nina Mingya Powles, author of Small Bodies of Water Small Fires is a hypnotically riveting and exhilaratingly thought-provoking read. As nourishing as the recipes contained, this book will forever change your experience of cooking, and is an absolute joy to read. -- Lara Williams Wild and physical writing, words that flex every muscle and every sense. Small Fires invites us all to not just cook, but to think through cooking. -- Charlie Porter I loved this genre-busting book which made me look differently at every recipe that I cook. Through a mix of memoir and philosophy, Rebecca May Johnson shows that cooking can be a wild kind of magic -- Bee Wilson Rebecca May Johnson's scintillating soliloquy on cooking adds a whole new dimension to food-writing, and pulls the tablecloth out from beneath a lot of stale (and often male) assumptions about the nature and value of domestic labour. I'll never think of a 'recipe' in the same way again -- Fuchsia Dunlop Revolutionary... this is a book that wakes up the reader's senses and delivers critical arguments "spattered" in oil, like the pages of a much-used recipe book, making them palatable. * Times Literary Supplement * The most compelling book about cooking I've read this year, perhaps ever. Rebecca is a writer of extraordinary intelligence and wit, and I would push this book with feverish enthusiasm into the hands of anyone who spends time in the kitchen. -- Jackson Boxer * Evening Standard * A gorgeous book... I love to read about the body and I love to read about food, and this tender little book allowed me to do both -- Saba Sams * Guardian * 'Johnson peels back the layers, looking at what food, appetite and pleasure mean in a bold and imaginative way. You will need plenty of snacks and meals to accompany the reading of this book - its food for the mind as much as for the stomach' -- Glamour Magazine, 'Best New Books of September 2023'