Sweet Nothings
Confessions of a Candy Lover
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- $299.00
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- $299.00
Descripción editorial
A fun, sophisticated illustrated collection of essays that catalogs the simple and not so simple pleasures of the eclectic world of candy from the award-winning author of After the Eclipse. With illustrations by Forsyth Harmon.
A taxonomy of sweetness, a rhapsody of artificial flavors, and a multi-faceted theory of pleasure, Sweet Nothings is made up of one hundred illustrated micro essays organized by candy color, from the red of Pop Rocks to the purple Jelly Bonbon in the Whitman’s Sampler. Each entry is a meditation on taste and texture, a memory unlocked. Everyone’s favorites—and least favorites—are carefully considered, including Snickers and Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter Cups, as well as the beloved Good n’ Plenty and Werther’s Originals.
An expert guide and exquisite writer, Sarah Perry asks such pressing questions as: Twizzlers or Red Vines? Why are Mentos eaters so maniacally happy? And in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, how could Edmund sell out his siblings for, of all things, Turkish delight? She rejects the dreaded “What is your favorite candy?” question and counters: Under what circumstances? F The question itself is flawed—favorite under what circumstances? In what weather? On the road, or at home? In what mood? For candy is inextricably tied to the seasons of our lives. Sweet Nothings moves associatively, touching on pop culture, art, culinary history, philosophy, body image, and class-based food moralism. It challenges the very idea of “junk” food and posits taking pleasure seriously as a means of survival.
Sarah Perry’s pure love of candy weaves together elegiac glimpses of her 90s childhood—and the loss at its center—with stories of love and desire. Surprisingly smart and frequently funny, Sweet Nothings is a tart and sweet ode to finding small joys where you can. Yes, even in black licorice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Candies serve as the jumping-off points for these delectable essays from memoirist Perry (After the Eclipse). "Sex and sugar are connected for me," Perry contends, describing how she relied on the pleasures of Lindor chocolate truffles as a substitute for sex when the stresses of the Covid-19 pandemic left her partner uninterested in making love. She uses the bittersweet flavor of Moxie, an old-fashioned soda, as a metaphor for her ambivalent feelings about her hometown in rural Maine, explaining that while the place still evokes painful memories of her mother's murder when Perry was a child, its charming provinciality meant that when she returned as an adult seeking relief for a persistent yeast infection, her doctor still prescribed such folk remedies as gentian violet, which cured her and derives from the same plant that gives Moxie its bitter aftertaste. Elsewhere, Perry uses sweets to recall episodes from throughout her life, writing, for instance, that "my mother, who loved a Payday, was 2 to 5 percent more beautiful on payday... when she shook out her curly hair and took me on an early evening drive... singing along to the radio as the light angled down orange into the evening." The evocative prose finds surprising depth in sugary confections. This is one to savor. Illus.
