The Writer’s Table: Famous Authors and Their Favourite Recipes

Debut author Stivers spins off her long-running “Eat Your Words” column at the Paris Review into this slight collection of “literary food stories.” Arranged alphabetically by author—from Austen to Yeats, with Didion, Hurston, and Kafka in the middle—each recipe is accompanied by a brief biographical sketch focused on the writer’s history with food. Some recipes are more robust than others, especially in cases where the authors themselves wrote cookbooks: Maya Angelou’s caramel cake comes from her Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, while Laurie Colwin’s gingerbread is sourced from her Home Cooking. Other dishes, tracked down from letters, diaries, and biographies, feel far vaguer, such as a brief prosaic description of boiled apple dumplings from George Orwell’s essay “British Cookery.” Still others are adapted by Stivers herself: learning that D.H. Lawrence baked a cake to help patch up a romantic quarrel, she offers a recipe for “Summer Cake with Any Fruit” as her “speculation of what such a cake might have been like.” The result is that one gets the sense Stivers is straining to fulfill her own premise. Fortunately, Tomlinson’s cheerful sketches of writers tucking into their dinners add charm throughout, and there’s a broad enough range of authors to pique the interest of any bookworm. This will make a fine stocking stuffer. (Oct.)