It would be great to have Sunday dinner with the Caputo family! What are gatherings with your family like? Are there special foods you always have on the table when you’re together?
My family gatherings were all-or-nothing affairs—simply meat and three vegetables or soup or huge feasts with friends, family, flowers, and themed table settings. My mother steers away from repetition, so every big gathering, even Christmas lunch, is different. I am from New Zealand, where Christmas is in our summer, which makes some of the more wintry traditions a bit misplaced. One year for Christmas lunch we hung pink and yellow streamers and paper lanterns and ate at a long table outside, finishing the meal with the pièce de résistance: a beautiful spherical mascarpone and berry frozen dessert my mother had spent a long time making. Unfortunately, it was so frozen solid we couldn’t slice it no matter the various ways we tried! So we left a huge knife in it, laughed till we cried, and waited until it melted a couple of hours later. I admire my mother’s enthusiasm for gatherings, bravery in trying new recipes, and good humor when they don’t go according to plan. No party with my family is ever the same, but the compulsory elements are: teasing each other, pretty paper napkins (a weird family obsession), everyone helping, laughter, and wine.
Your descriptions of food are positively mouthwatering. What research did you do to learn about Italian food and cooking? Did you have help developing the recipes, or did you come up with them on your own?
As soon as I decided on Frankie’s ethnicity, I began my research into southern Italian food and cooking. For me, food is a crucial aspect in understanding a culture; it can explain so much about geography, influences, wealth, values, and relationships. Personally cooking, testing, and adapting the recipes taught me a lot about Sicilian culture that I would not have appreciated otherwise. The recipes in the book are a mixture of those I created from scratch and traditional recipes I minimally adapted. The traditional recipes (e.g. nzuddi, mother in law’s Tongues, Pasta alla Norma) are as close to the original, uncomplicated versions as possible, because I hope readers will discover more about Sicilian culture through making them, just as I did. Other recipes (e.g. banana bread, spring risotto) I invented or took more liberties with to adapt to my personal taste. I also consulted Sicilian-Australian chef Alfie Spina regarding the recipes I had chosen, and he gave me hints and tips, some of which have been passed down from generation to generation within his family.
It seems sweet that Jack likes Frankie so much, but she clearly isn’t ready for a relationship yet. Some authors might have pushed for a romance here. Did you ever consider a scenario in which Jack and Frankie end up together?
Absolutely—I’m a romantic at heart; I couldn’t help but foist my matchmaking upon them! I did explore other endings in which Frankie and Jack more obviously wound up together, but given Frankie’s grief and Jack’s diplomacy, these endings didn’t ring true to the characters. I’m pleased with the final outcome, which I think is more delicate and authentic to their natures.
The overarching message of the value of forgiveness in the novel will really stick with the reader. Have you ever been torn over whether or not to forgive someone in your life?
That is a fascinating question because generally I forgive very easily. I like to believe in the good in people. I’m not great at self-forgiveness, though, and guilt sometimes stalks me. In the book Summer is the character I worry about the most because, other than grief and guilt, she is left with so little compared to the others. I think she struggles with self-forgiveness. I wonder if readers will forgive Summer for her actions or not?
You are a self-described nomad who has lived in Canada, Australia, England, and Macau. Where was your favorite place to live and why? Where would you most like to travel that you haven’t been yet?
That’s a tough choice to make because every place I have lived has been so different and offered so much. I joke that I am always missing someone and somewhere no matter where I am. The beauty of living abroad is that you leave pieces of yourself, of your heart, all over the world. The pain of it is exactly that, too! For now I will say that New Zealand is my favorite place to live. It is where I was raised and where I am raising my own children—there is a lovely, familiar, cyclic feeling to that. Plus, my family is here, the air is good, and the baking is great. As for where I’d most like to travel to—what I have found is that the more I see of the world the more there is to see! So my wish list is very, very long. Currently at the top of the list are: Turkey, Burma, Portland, New Orleans, Sweden, Beijing, and back again to Japan, Bali, New York, California, and France. I might have to win the lottery.
What are you working on next? Will we ever see Frankie and Bella, or Jack and Huia, again?
I am very excited about my next project—another novel filled with food and love and set in an evocative location. I feel very blessed that writing is my job and I get to explore all these imagined characters, settings, and stories and then share them with you! As for Frankie and Bella, Huia and Jack, Merriem and Papa, and the rest of the Season of Salt and Honey characters, I think of them often. I would love to drop in on them again and see what they are getting up to.
Enhance Your Book Club
• • • •
1. Using the recipes provided throughout the novel, cook an Italian feast!
2. Research foraging opportunities in your area and go on an expedition with your book club.
3. Write about your most memorable meal or dining experience and share it with your book club.
Discover Hannah Tunnicliffe's first delicious novel, The Color of Tea
Macau: the bulbous nose of China, a peninsula and two islands strung together like a three-bead necklace. It was time to find a life for myself. To make something out of nothing. The end of hope and the beginning of it too.
Grace opens a café where she serves tea, coffee, and macarons—the delectable, delicate French cookies colored like precious stones—to the women of Macau. There, among fellow expatriates and locals alike, Grace carves out a new definition of home and family. But when her marriage reaches a crisis, secrets Grace thought she had buried long ago rise to the surface. Grace realizes it’s now or never to lay old ghosts to rest and to begin to trust herself. With each mug of coffee brewed, each cup of tea steeped and macaron baked, Grace comes to learn that strength can be gleaned from the unlikeliest of places.
The Colour of Tea
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About the Author
• • • •
© JODY LIDSTONE
Born in New Zealand, Hannah Tunnicliffe is a self-confessed nomad. She has lived in Canada, Australia, England, Macau, and, while traveling Europe, a camper van named Fred. She currently lives in New Zealand with her husband and two daughters and coauthors the blog “Fork and Fiction,” which explores her twin loves—books and food. Season of Salt and Honey is her second novel.
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The Color of Tea
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Touchstone
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or place
s or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Hannah Tunnicliffe
Originally published in 2015 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
Cover Photographs: Top © Trinette Reed/Blend Images/Getty Images, Bottom © Silvia Jansen/E+/Getty Images
Opposite Contraries: The Unknown Journals of Emily Carr and Other Writings, written by Emily Carr and edited by Susan Crean (Douglas and McIntyre: 2003). Reprinted with permission from the publisher.
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First Touchstone trade paperback edition September 2015
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Cover Design by Lucy Kim
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tunnicliffe, Hannah, 1979–
Season of salt and honey : a novel / Hannah Tunnicliffe.—First Touchstone trade paperback edition.
pages ; cm
1. Life change events—Fiction. 2. Grief—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.4.T836S43 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015024603
ISBN 978-1-4516-8284-7
ISBN 978-1-4516-8285-4 (ebook)
Season of Salt and Honey Page 26
