Butter: A Confronting Yet Comforting Read

I can't help but begin by pointing out that I love that the publisher chose Nigel Slater's (author of Toast) comment to print on the back. A 70-year-old man is definitely not the target audience of this book, but I love the allusion.

Once again, this is a book that is the subject of pretty universal praise, replete with food puns ad nauseam. The blurb accurately states that it is a 'vivid, unsettling exploration of

misogyny, obsession and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.'

'Transgressive pleasures of food' feels like the right place to start. I'll cover the misogyny angle for dessert ;). The descriptions of the food manage to sound both delicious and utterly repulsive:

'The sweet-sour scent of the fruit commingled with the wild tang of the meat, stimulating the appetite'

The prose is generally fairly spare, but when food is the topic, Asako adds all the trimmings. For me, these descriptions capture the two ways I can look at truly rich fare - either with longing to taste or disgust at the thought of what it will do to my body, tied up with the image of fat clogging up arteries and being atherosclerotic. I can and do feel these things simultaneously - like when I look at a Cinnabon cinnamon roll. I know that the mouthfeel is, in fact, smooth and delicious, but its consequences and lard-like colour are concurrently repulsive. These entwined feelings preclude any ability to enjoy rich food without complication/issue/consequence. By hamming up these feelings, Asako is forcing her readers to confront, and thus question, them.

The main character arc illustrates her desire for people to be more forgiving and indulgent towards food and its power to bring people together. Riko begins the novel as outwardly successful, enviously slim and 'boyish', and doing well in her career as a journalist, often working late and having little time to herself. Work events enable her to have an active social life. She ends the novel plumper, with a better work-life balance, and a circle of friends and family in the process of opening up to each other and the joy of being together.

Food becomes associated with vulnerability - only when she cooks Kaji's recipes does she understand her weaknesses and start to see through her dominating and mesmerising facade. Only when she cooks for Shinoi do they open up to each other about why they are friends. Only when she cooks for Makoto does she understand that their relationship is too shallow to continue. It is through embracing this vulnerability that Riko is emboldened to realise what she wants out of her meals, her job, her friends, and her life. She is advised by her best friend Reiko throughout to work out what the "right amount" of food is for her personally, perhaps indicating that eating in a balanced way is an extension of living in a balanced way more broadly.

The misogyny angle is harder to weigh up and measure. Asako portrays the invisible societal pressure on women in relationships. Reiko voices that she regrets

'not voicing your hopes or what you really feel, enticing the other person to behave as you want, watching them to see how they act so you don't mess things up...I was so concerned with trying to get Ryōsuke to act in the way I wanted him to that I was actually running in the opposite direction from him, without ever really telling him what I wanted. I'd abandoned the idea of having an equal conversation.'

This idea of women waiting on, almost mothering, yet in a subservient way while the men become dependent on their care and oblivious to their own needs to the utter detriment of healthy relationships abounds throughout the novel. It is seen more overtly in the unsolved debate over whether the Kaji (convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen who she'd seduced) is guilty of murder via an accomplice, or of just making men utterly dependent on her care and then leaving them to their own devices to die.

This thread of the novel made me examine my own relationships and question to what extent I'm responsible for my husband's emotional well-being and whether it is an appropriate amount.

A clever, multilayered, provocative read.