THE GASTRONOMY OF MARRIAGE

'In this delectable memoir, author Michelle Maisto uses that most revealing of questions within a new relationship What should we do about dinner? to tell the story of the year of her engagement. This is an exquisitely written ode to food and love, written with a dash of realism and a sprinkling of humour.It is a book about two lives coming together at the dinner table. It's a story of lasagna, fried rice and Mexican stew, both the successful meals and the terribly less so. It's about having nothing to eat when the cupboard is bare and nothing to eat when it's full. About sharing a meal each night with a man who was raised in another household and so has different traditions and approaches to eating, different comfort foods, small allergies and dislikes, a body with a superior metabolism and a stunning catalogue of digestive maladies and who, if all goes according to plan, will be the person Michelle shares her dinners with always.Marriage is something Michelle looked forward to but also feared, for both its fragility and its bind. During this year of their engagement, though, the nightly ritual of dinner becomes her litmus test; her way of knowing, as much as one can know such things, whether this marriage might be one they can survive and even love.'