Bee Wilson for The Heart-Shaped Tin: Love, Loss, and Kitchen Objects

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.

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.