Description
Book Synopsis“Enjoy your homes. Enjoy your food. There is nothing that can take their place.” Half a world away from her home in Manitoulin Island, Ethel Mulvany is starving in Singapore’s infamous Changi Prison, along with hundreds of other women jailed there as POWs during the Second World War. They beat back pangs of hunger by playing decadent games of make-believe and writing down recipes filled with cream, raisins, chocolate, butter, cinnamon, ripe fruit—the unattainable ingredients of peacetime, of home, of memory. In this novelistic, immersive biography, Suzanne Evans presents a truly individual account of WWII through the eyes of Ethel—mercurial, enterprising, combative, stubborn, and wholly herself. The Taste of Longing follows Ethel through the fall of Singapore in 1942, the years of her internment, and beyond. As a prisoner, she devours dog biscuits and book spines, befriends spiders and smugglers, and endures torture and solitary confinement. As a free woman back in Canada, she fights to build a life for herself in the midst of trauma and burgeoning mental illness. Woven with vintage recipes and transcribed tape recordings, the story of Ethel and her fantastical POW Cookbook is a testament to the often-overlooked strength of women in wartime. It’s a story of the unbreakable power of imagination, generosity, and pure heart.
Table of ContentsTable of Contents Prologue: Setting the Table I. Meeting the Emperor 1. What’s a Manitoulin Girl Doing in Singapore? 2. The Tiger Woman 3. Bon Voyage Photos 4. Stepping Out in Singapore 5. Guns, Bicycles and Spies 6. Loaded to the Hilt on Benzedrine 7. Silence of the Guns II. Getting to Hunger 8. The Road to Jail 9. On the Inside 10. Shopping for Food and Answers 11. Shop for Some Pumpkins in Stall 38 12. The Logic of a Dream 13. Recipes of Longing III. Dreaming it Up 14. Stitching Stories 15. The Red Cross Silence Hut 16. The Games People Play 17. Double Tenth 18. Descending Mania 19. Solitary Confinement IV. Breaking Out 20. Shameful Hunger 21. First Feasts 22. The Horrors of Health Care 23. Is this Home? 24. Never Enough 25. The Gift of Food V. Putting it all Together 26. Not Fit Company for Herself 27. Treasure Van 28. What’s in the Bottom Drawer? 29. A Forgiving Spirit Draws Two Worlds Together Notes Index
