Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner
by Jennifer Hayden
$19.99 (US) | ISBN 978-1-60309-567-9
208 pages | 6.5” x 7.5”
Full color softcover graphic novel
Top Shelf Productions
Jennifer Hayden has never liked to cook. She’s not particularly good at it, either. But, like so many of us…she does it anyway. Why is that? Where did these expectations come from? What happens if you don’t live up to the ideal of the perfect wife/mother/chef? And would someone please open a window before the fire department comes?
Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner: Confessions of a Cartoonist Cook is an accidental memoir from a woman whose comics earn rave reviews around the world but whose meals earn shrugs around the dinner table.
Marinating in an unconventional and aromatic blend of formats, Hayden traces the nuances of her complicated relationship to food. Anecdotal comics alternate with wryly ironic “recipes,” peppered with oven fires, explosions, prayers, and incantations. Along the way, all the salty judgments and bitter frustrations just might caramelize into some real wisdom and self-acceptance. In any case, it’s all hand-painted in mouth-watering color as a tribute to Hayden’s love of cookbooks…or at least the illustrations inside them.
Amber’s Thoughts:
Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner is more like a picture book for adults. Readers are presented with an autobiographical tome about a woman who is a mother and wife who can’t cook.
There’s satire, honesty, judgment, and lots of self-deprecation that gently eases as she begins to be a kitchen witch. Her cauldron may be a sauce pan with encrusted mysteries of dinner past, but Jennifer still believes the Goddess will guide her in making food that isn’t repulsive or flavorless.
This is a mild take on female rage as the theme. The only things dying in Hayden’s story are appetites and cookware.
Preview:
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.