Butter Honey Pig Bread

Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi
Reviewed by Linda
📙📙📙📙📙

I will start by saying that this book is RICH, deep and superbly executed. Ekwuyasi writes about belonging, grief and hope. But ultimately it’s the love of food and the act of breaking bread with strangers or loved ones that binds the different themes of this story together.

We intimately follow estranged twins Taiye and Kehinde and their mother Kambirinachi, all of whom have a strained relationship with one another following traumatic events.

As each woman fumbles their way through life’s ups and downs, the author lets us get up close and personal and it this portrayal of intimacy that is deserving of all the awards.

The twins spend over a decade apart with no contact. Kehinde is grieving and unable to communicate with her sister but throws herself into healing by cooking, like a tonic for the soul.
Wounded by her sister’s silence, Taiye continues to write letters to her soulmate and explores her sexuality with a string of dead end flings. Despite both being busy in their own lives, neither shake off the air of loneliness that follows them from Canada, France, London to Lagos and back again.

Then their mother’s health rapidly declines back in Lagos, forcing them to face each other and be the daughters their mother needs by her side. This bit for me was the most poignant.

Picture yourself after time spent in the best company accompanied by the best food you’ve ever eaten and that feeling of immense satisfaction when both your belly and heart are full. If I was to translate those feelings into a literary experience, the result would be Butter Honey Pig Bread!