The Heart-Shaped Tin
Love, Loss and Kitchen Objects
Format:Hardback
Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers
Published:8th May '25
Should be back in stock very soon
Love, Loss and Kitchen Objects – new from the award-winning author of The Secret of Cooking
‘Extraordinary’ TELEGRAPH ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Bee Wilson is one of my favourite writers and this may be her best book' CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN
This strikingly original account from award-winning food writer Bee Wilson charts how everyday objects take on deeply personal meanings in all our lives.
One ordinary day, the tin in which Bee Wilson baked her wedding cake fell to the ground at her feet. This should have been unremarkable, except that her marriage had just ended.
Unsettled by her own feelings about the heart-shaped tin, Wilson begins a search for others who have attached strong and even magical meanings to kitchen objects. She meets people who deal with grief or pain by projecting emotions onto certain objects, whether it is a beloved parent’s salt shaker, a cracked pasta bowl or an inherited china dinner service. Remembering her own mother, a dementia sufferer, she explores the ways that both of them have been haunted by deciding which kitchen utensils to hold on to and which to get rid of when you think you are losing your mind.
Looking to different continents, cultures and civilisations to investigate the full scope of this phenomenon, Wilson blends her own experiences with a series of touching personal stories that reflect the irrational and fundamentally human urge to keep mementos. Why would a man trapped in a concentration camp decide to make a spoon for himself? Why do some people hoard? What do gifts mean? How do we decide what is junk and what is treasure? We see firsthand how objects can contain hidden symbols, keep the past alive and even become powerful symbols of identity and resistance; from a child’s first plate to a refugee’s rescued vegetable corers.
Thoughtful, tender and beautifully written, The Heart-Shaped Tin is a moving examination of love, loss, broken cups and the legacy of things we all leave behind.
‘This beautifully written book about the deep significance of certain objects in our kitchen – is nothing less than an intense, compassionate expression of the human condition … Both intimate and expansive, The Heart-Shaped Tin is a book I know I’ll give, urgently and importantly, to those I love … I had to sit quietly with myself for a while after finishing...
‘Bee Wilson’s study of kitchen objects passed down through generations, The Heart-Shaped Tin, offers an intimate new way of telling a life … This is a wonderful and original book, which has made me look at ‘stuff’ in a different way. I didn’t think I would love it as much as I did’ Telegraph 5-star review
‘What makes this book sing is how Wilson has managed to strike the perfect (and rare) balance between historical and sociological survey — investigating other people’s fondness for their utensils — and memoir, weaving in rich personal anecdotes that show why her own kitchen is full of ghosts … thoroughly enjoyable book’ The Times
‘Warmly thoughtful, engaging and often erudite riffs on the strange potency of everyday things … Like those great food writers Margaret Visser and M F K Fisher, Wilson knows that everyday objects are the living echo of the great human rituals of labour, consolation, civilisation and, sometimes, subversion’ Literary Review
‘Bee Wilson is one of my favourite writers and this may be her best book. It is about love, and loss, life and death. About what to keep and what to discard. It covers superstition, magic and more than anything it is a manual for recovery. Toast racks, pressure cookers, baby food scissors – these are some of the tools that Wilson uses to reckon with, and answer, the most profound questions about the human condition. Full of joy and hope, this book will be an antidote to sadness in any reader’ Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People
'Bee Wilson’s beautiful, melancholy book gave me permission to get out and enjoy the breadboard I took from my beloved late aunt’s kitchen. Her generous understanding of why stuff matters to us is a humane rebuke to the declutterers, and she shows just how a melon baller, a toast-rack and a charity-shop platter can indeed bring joy' Emma Smith, author of Portable Magic
ISBN: 9780008685638
Dimensions: 222mm x 141mm x 34mm
Weight: 270g
320 pages