Candy and Me
A Love Story
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
As a seven-year-old child, Hilary Liftin poured herself a glass (or two) of powdered sugar. Those forbidden cups soon escalated to pound bags of candy corn and multiple packets of dry cocoa mix, launching the epic love affair between Hilary and all things sweet. In Candy and Me: A Love Story, Liftin chronicles her life through candy memories and milestones. As a high school student, Hilary used candy to get through track meets, bad hair days, after-school jobs, and her first not-so-great love. Her sweet tooth followed her to college, where she tried to suppress the crackle of Smarties wrappers in morning classes. Through life's highs and lows, her devotion has never crashed -- candy has been a constant companion and a refuge that sustained her.
As Liftin recounts her record-setting candy consumption, loves and friendships unfold in a funny and heartbreaking series of bittersweet revelations and restorative meditations. Hilary survives a profound obsession with jelly beans and a camp counselor, a forgettable fling with Skittles at a dot-com, and a messy breakup healed by a friendship forged over Circus Peanuts. Through thick and thin, sweet and sour, Hilary confronts the challenges of conversation hearts and the vagaries of boyfriends, searching for that perfect balance of love and sugar.
Written with a fresh dry humor that will immediately absorb you into Liftin's sweet obsessions and remind you of your own, Candy and Me unwraps the meaning found in the universal desire for connection and confection. Treat yourself to Candy and Me -- being bad never read so good.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this charming book, Liftin, who co-authored the epistolary memoir Dear Exile,uses the intriguing conceit of telling her life story through candy. She begins with her childhood indulgence Dixie cups of confectioner's sugar and continues through serious connoisseurship of Smarties, Lemonheads, Fireballs, Marshmallow Eggs and dozens of other candies. Liftin is a cheerful addict, and like most addicts, she is very specific in her tastes. She loves chalky, cheap, artificially flavored dime store candies. Dark chocolate is too sophisticated for her: "If I were a dark chocolate eater, my whole life and personality would be different. I would know how to dress 'office casual.' I would be better at wearing hats." Liftin describes her beloved treats so sumptuously that even those who don't relish Conversation Hearts or Candy Corn will grasp their appeal. In the chapter "I Know What You're Thinking," she blithely dismisses questions of tooth decay, diabetes and weight gain with, "I don't want to talk about any of those things." Under chapters named for candies, she details the joys of each particular sweet and what it represents about a specific time in her life. Lovers and friendships come and go, but candy never fails her. Indeed, when she meets the love of her life, the bag of hard-to-find Bottle Caps he presents her with is almost as pleasing as the engagement ring he's hidden in it. But candy finally takes its proper place 45 pounds of it, decorating tables for the couple's wedding. Liftin's writing is fluid and engaging, inviting consumption at one sitting and, for some, instigating a mad rush to the closest candy counter.
