Hungry Heart

Award-winning food writer Clare Finney presents a passionate, heartfelt exploration of the intertwining influences of food and love throughout her life in this brilliant and moving memoir.

What does it mean for food to be more than fuel? How does it come to define us, our status, our identities, and the relationships we have with others?

Hungry Heart, by Clare Finney, Food Writer of the Year 2019 at the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards, delves into these questions with a rare and insightful sensitivity. It tells a powerful story of life and love while uncovering the manifold ways in which food touches every relationship, every aspect of our lives.

Beginning with a childhood spent in her grandmother's hotel kitchen and ending at her grandfather's bedside, Finney charts a course through both the trials and triumphs of her life, highlighting the meals and recipes which have shaped the person she is today.

She also investigates the role food plays in a modern society that can be isolating and alienating, exploring how eating brings us together in diverse ways around the world. From the dance of culinary courtship present in the world of modern dating to the funeral foods of Shiva which remind us of the connections between life and death, Finney asks important and powerful questions of what food truly represents in our complicated lives.

This book is a nourishing feast, an honest account of humans breaking bread together and what, in a world of Deliveroo and digital communication, that really means.