Bookseller Publisher Review

It makes sense that Murdoch Books first foray into fiction (under the banner of Pier 9) should be a book that is full of food. Set in a Philippines village in the 1960s, Banana Heart Summer is laden with chilli and sweat, laced with sweetness and sprinkled with ash from the volcano that marks one end of the narrator’s street. Nining (or Nenita) is the eldest in a large family that tries hard to make do in grinding poverty. When her father is laid off, she goes to their well-off next-door neighbours and offers her services as housemaid and cook. Each chapter is named after a different dish (besides being a lovely read, the book is a great introduction to the little known cuisine of the Philippines) and the food that Nenita cooks, eats and—in the ‘oesophagus-lengthening’ days of bare-cupboard poverty at the start of the book—the dishes she wishes she were eating, almost literally flavours the book. There are overtones of magic realism in this novel, hovering as it does at times between the real world and somewhere slightly fantastic. Overall, thoroughly engaging and enjoyable with fascinating characters and food writing so evocative you can almost smell it. Eliza Metcalfe is AB&P’s assistant editor C. 2005 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors