Delicacy: A memoir about cake and death

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It is hard to capture the fullness of Delicacy without falling back on the cheesy descriptors more commonly saved for movie posters (It’ll make you laugh! The last book you read before you die is like the type of coin that gets put under your tongue for Charon. My walks with my dad were at a younger age, walking the guard dog at the place where he worked across rough ground that used to hold a cotton mill. His words were pathetic, though, revealing a truth about bullies – that they cover over their inadequacies with bluster and are triggered by those they see as weak being cleverer than them. We work closely with publishers and authors to ensure that we offer the best books on the market for your child.

That book is Delicacy, “a memoir about cake and death”, per its subtitle, which reads like a quietly furious howl. She describes how she would walk behind her father, and that she became ‘good at reading the back of his neck. The episodes that describe the deaths of her parents and her closest friend, in quick succession, are extremely moving, both because of their restraint and because Wix is so rigorous in her observations of her own thoughts and feelings.It takes the form of an extended letter written to the chair of the board of Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust museum, by a nameless historian who’s found himself trapped in a career as a tour guide of Holocaust sites in Poland – immersive, horror-filled work that’s quite naturally driven him to a nervous breakdown. That idea of emotional honesty is an important one – perhaps we forget the specifics of past events, but the associated emotions don’t ever really dissipate.

It is – in many ways – an experience common to womanhood, the realisation that being a girl, being a woman, is hard; that after your body ceases – as Wix puts it – to be a “neutral zone”, there is an embarking upon a journey of push-and-pull, the denial of sustenance combined with the inevitable craving, and caving, to the numbing power of coveted food. To summarise, probably more a slice of “life” -well actually, more death, loss and grief, than a slice of cake.Ageing; learning; testing, stretching, abusing; consuming, nourishing; connecting and disconnecting; losing and coping - all trying to be simultaneously reflected upon and understood still through these words. Delicacy is a gut-wrenching read which discusses themes we can all relate to, but this book also fills us with hope as Katy teaches us not to let your grief consume you, but to learn how to live with it.