'A bracingly original, boundary-breaking exploration of cooking and the kitchen, from a rising star in food writing.

Small Fires reinvents cooking - that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, splattering red hot sauce on our books - as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe; the power of small fires burning everywhere.'

I loved it start to finish - bliss! A smart, creative and thoughtful book.

I love the amalgamation of food and memoir in this book. The deft writing and narrative is mind-blowing and I loved reading every page of this book.

With thanks to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve rounded up from 3.5 stars because parts of this are brilliant, Rebecca May Johnson veers from the UK to Berlin to Ancient Greece, a decade ago to the present, pop culture to psychoanalysis and literary criticism. The voice doesn’t quite work for me in some places and in others it’s perfect - maybe that’s the academic or the constant address to You (uncommon in English). Honestly, the psychologist trying to talk about creatively cooking sausages without a recipe is a good section, although I find the reference to Mrs Beeton (given many of her recipes came from other writers of the day) an interesting one. Best of all is food as dialogue, as a performative act and the body making the food, working with the recipe; the absolute insistence on the body makes this worth reading alone. (The hot red epic is a deceptively simple tomato sauce by the way.) The epic itself compared to the Odyssey and translation as an act into the physical world, simultaneously the book is essay and personal account. Sorry I can’t describe it better, if you’re interested in food writing this is probably a must - current critical theory? Barthes, Boyer… older philosophers make appearances too. This is a conversation, whether or not the tone is what you expect.

An excellent mix of memoir and recipes. It's a fascinating read that can appeal to anyone who likes to cook or anyone interested in food.
Liked the style of writing and the recipes.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This did not disappoint. Food writing, especially the new set of food memoirs that have been published in recent years, is some of my favourite non fiction to read.
I loved the journey we took with Rebecca with 'the recipe' and I am excited to give it a go myself.
Beautifully written and enjoyable book!

A wonderful read a mix of memoir and recipes.A book to dip in and out of I found this a unique read a book I will be recommending.#netgalley #pushkinpress.

Poetic in some ways, rather confusing in others. The author's writing style really wasn't one I got on with and it became rather academic for my taste. If you like more poetic, lyrical writing with interwoven theory about the act of cooking, this is the book for you, but not for me.

This is a lovely book to dip into if you love food. It's not a recipe book nor does it tell you how to cook. It does however challenge you to think about topics such as putting on your apron to prepare food; what it means to make a recipe hundreds of times and also why recipes are important. An enjoyable read.

One of my favourite hobbies is to read recipe books.

I read them from cover to cover like novels.

I love reading about food, and this book is a delicious meal to savour, one bite at a time.

I think my kindle said this book would take me 2 hours to read but it took me much longer because I didn’t want to rush it.

My favourite moments reading it was curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea, on my own, quietly.

I adored it. A beautiful discourse on food which made me genuinely excited to book my next meal, but also ruminations on love and feminism and greek myths and translation and interpretation and creativity and freedom.

I want to buy this for everyone I know.

At once a food memoir and a piece of literary and philosophical criticism, Small Fires is like nothing I’ve read before. It won’t be a book for everyone but there was lots to love in it. I especially liked the long, sensual lead up to finding out exactly what The Recipe entailed - and I wasn’t disappointed to learn it was something so simple that I could try for myself.

A highly enjoyable and stimulating memoir of how the author's adult life has been shaped by her love of food and cooking. Specifically she focuses on the process of cooking what she calls "the recipe" -- a tomato sauce recipe Johnson found on The Guardian website (by Marcella Hazan) which she has cooked hundreds of times. Incidentally I can't find the link to the actual original recipe - which is funny considering Johnson spends time trying to track down Hazan's original recipe in old, hard to get hold of recipe books - but this recipe seems very similar to the version Johnson uses.

Highly recommended for fans of Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, In the Kitchen: Essays on Food and Life and those who enjoy Nina Mingya Powles writing.

As a lover of food, and food (non)fiction. I was excited to read Small Fires, not quite knowing what to expect I dived in and quickly got sucked into the world of spattering tomato sauce.

Small Fires is not like any other food book I have read, in fact, not like any book I've read. Rebecca May Johnson manages to bring the passion of food and ingredients to life using all of our senses, combined with astonishing literature references.

Small Fires is full of intelligence, but also the honesty of what appear to be mental health struggles which are written in a very relatable manner.

Having bookmarked over 10 pages, it's fair to say this book left me viewing the world of food very different than ever before. The author takes us on a journey of feminism; the role of a women in the kitchen. But also how recipes provide a starting point of a journey, every repeated recipe being slightly different based on your mood, your guests and the ingredients available.

A beautiful, thought provoking book that is bound to make you want to: purchase all the literature referenced and grab a bowl of pasta.

I can't help but wonder... who is the 'You' so lovingly mentioned in the book. I'll have to read it again to uncover.

I don't think I've ever read a memoir quite like this - a mix of beautiful food writing and musings on greek mythology.

This book will make you hungry! The food writing is extremely evocative, Rebecca May Johnson is very gifted in this department and reading it not only made me very hungry, but made me specifically crave what she was writing about. The chapter detailing the many times she has made a certain recipe throughout her life was an absolute joy to read and I will no doubt be attempting the same recipe since I can't get it out of my head!

At times it did feel a bit disjointed but it wasn't long before I was pulled back in again as some delicious morsel was being described.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the opportunity to review this book!

Journalist and essayist Rebecca May begins by telling us she wants to look at cooking in a different way, a revolutionary way of thinking about the everyday work in the kitchen if you will. Throughout her ten-year cooking life she’s repeated ‘the recipe’, serving it to a multitude of friends, lovers and acquaintances, sometimes sticking to it, sometimes making additions, sometimes changing the method depending on who she’s cooking for and what she has available. It’s her epic, the kitchen equivalent of The Odyssey which she frequently references, and the bedrock of her cooking.

Idiosyncratic, erudite and full of digressions, Small Fires sets about rescuing cooking from a dismissive patriarchy. It’s quite angry at times but also very funny. For Johnson, the kitchen is often a place of joy, a room to dance around to music as sausages fry in the pan. Cookery books are to be spattered with oil and sauce not left pristine and untouched on the shelf. An intriguing and surprising book, Small Fires is both a celebration of what is an everyday experience for many of us and a very personal exploration of what that experience means.

Rebecca co-founded the literary food salon ‘Voices at The Table’ and ‘Sitting Room’, a long-running series of readings in people’s houses and public spaces. In 2017 she created the Food Memory Bank, a digital project to collect public memory about food and eating. Since 2011, Rebecca has kept the online recipe diary, Dinner Document.

In Small Fires she plays with the form of memoir told through essays by incorporating recipes alongside beautiful poetic passages encapsulating events in her life and their relation to food and cooking, It's an absolutely delightful read featuring mouth watering prose that will have you running to the kitchen. The lengthy descriptions of the endless varieties of tomato sauce has inspired me to try to create my own spin on the dish which I look forward to future experimentation for years to come.