British food journalist Bee Wilson turns her keen eye on kitchenware--and the deep emotions it engenders--in her engaging, insightful ninth book, The Heart-Shaped Tin. Wilson (First Bite) delves into the varied roles of cherished kitchen objects. She draws together meticulous research; interviews with chefs, immigrants, and others who hold dear their often-used kitchenware; and her own experience with her kitchen paraphernalia as she navigated her divorce, her mother's dementia and death, and her two older children leaving home.
Wilson recounts the incident that sparked the book: the titular heart-shaped tin, an enduring symbol of her marriage, fell out of its cupboard just months after her husband left her. Wilson kept the tin, but knew she wasn't yet ready to use it for any new, post-divorce occasions. Instead, she began searching for other people who harbored "intense and even magical feelings" about their kitchen items.
As she describes the objects and examines the meaning they hold for their owners, Wilson broadens her exploration to well-known cooking artifacts, such as the "poetry jars" made by enslaved American potter David Drake in the mid-19th century. She muses on cultural associations with cooking and serving food, but also with owning prestige objects, like her mother's cream-colored Aga stove.
Wilson's heart-shaped tin gets its redemptive turn when Wilson bakes her milestone birthday cake in it. She shares the cake with her children, and honors her mother by pulling out her mother's cherished set of platters.
Poignant, thought-provoking, and lavishly detailed, The Heart-Shaped Tin is a moving tribute to the objects that shape our lives in (and out of) the kitchen. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams