Bread and milk

Emma — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

‘Karolina Ramqvist’s writing is straight-talking scripture’ – Heidi Julavits, author of Directions to Myself

A moving memoir detailing four generations of women through the food they share.

In Bread and Milk, Karolina Ramqvist traces a girlhood through food – she recalls the bag of tangerines devoured in one sitting outside her mother’s bedroom, and delighting in the luxury of that extra knob of butter on her grandmother’s rice pudding.

In the thin spread of low-fat margarine on her mother’s bread, and the pancakes on the counter each time she will be left alone for the night, the young Karolina learns that food connects the women in her life as much as it reveals the chasms between them. When she finds herself a single parent to a daughter of her own, food becomes the way for her to show her love, but also instils a complicated inheritance.

Bread and Milk is a brazenly intelligent – and mouth-wateringly delicious – reflection on love, motherhood and family from one of Sweden’s most notable literary stylists.

Bear Woman

Emma — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

For readers of Rachel Cusk, Lisa Taddeo and the essays of Zadie Smith, Bear Woman is a beautifully wrought memoir from one of Sweden’s bestselling authors, in which she examines motherhood and the female experience.’The deeply personal journey of a writer, surprising and illuminating, and for me, familiar in the most reassuring way as she loses herself in this compelling story’ – Esther Freud, author of Hideous KinkyMarguerite de la Rocque didn’t exist before her guardian abandoned her on a remote island.Abandoned, pregnant to a man she’d met on board one of the first ships sailing to settle what became Canada, Marguerite was forced to fight for her life against the treacherous wilderness of Nova Scotia, giving birth alone. When her guardian returned nearly two years later, her lover and her baby had died, but Marguerite had survived. Returning to France, her story was concealed so that her family’s reputation might be protected.Centuries later, a woman with small children of her own begins writing what she believes to be a television script about the life of Marguerite de la Rocque and her incredible story of survival against the odds. As she delves deeper into the hidden history of Marguerite and her extraordinary story of persecution and survival, the woman begins to question her ability to tell this story, or that of any woman in history, and in so doing exposes a fundamental truth about what it is to be both a writer and mother.Combining historical text, autobiographical fiction and essay with the uncertainty of memory, Bear Woman is a deeply moving journey into what it means to be a woman, in a world in which men still hold power.

Ramqvist, Karolina – The Bell Bookshop

Bread and milk

Bear Woman