Delicacy: A memoir about cake and death

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However, it is also -and rather unfortunately, a book that would strongly benefit from an extra edit or two, as ultimately it read a little too “all over the (cake?)shop” for my liking Katy Wix: Yeah, exactly. And I think that those numbered fragments made sense because I felt like I was outside of normal time. It’s such a cliche, especially when someone dies, to say that time stops, and I don’t think it did stop, exactly, but it changed. I felt outside of other people’s time. Their lives were just carrying on and that becomes an outrageous idea when you’re grieving.

Katy Wix: Yeah, it was so different. But actually, the loneliness I really revelled in because I’m so used to writing in collaboration with other people and I think — because I’ve mostly written for TV and radio — you go through so many other people’s notes, and then there’s often a kind of gatekeeper at the top, so it was liberating to have none of that. As soon as I realised my editor was really supportive and happy to go with my more experimental ideas, I relished that creative freedom. If you compare it to TV writing, it was like I was the director, the producer, the writer and the costume department all in one.

Katy is a stunning writer, seamlessly moving between bitingly funny moments and moments that make you violently, cathartically sob at 2am. An absolute belter of a book that stays with you’– Roisin Conaty In the fifth episode of Ghosts series 4, the characters found a new ghost on the grounds of Button House. Katy sees the world like no one else and deciphers it with extraordinary beauty. Delicacy took my breath away’– Lolly Adefope She was burned at the stake on the grounds of Button House, implying she worked there as a servant.

Bird Island – Radio 4 Sitcom". British Comedy Guide. Archived from the original on 20 September 2017 . Retrieved 19 July 2017. Caragh Medlicott: I was thinking the other day about those little souvenir magnets you can buy, the kind mums love, where they say stuff like “I’m watching my weight — but it’s not going anywhere!”. It’s a joke, but also it points to the longevity of it — of how it’s taken as given that women are always dieting. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the feeling of cycling – the freedom, the smells and sights of being outdoors – it was more that I felt unwilling to let myself be looked at whilst doing it, because I struggled to ride a bike, and I looked like someone who struggled to ride a bike, and I was so ashamed. The humiliation outweighed the joy.Deeply comforting in how relatable it is, hilarious, and moving. I felt like this book was my best friend as soon as I started reading it' Cakes are weird, camp objects that seem to appear whenever something emotionally devastating is happening to me. They represent everything that is false and cloying. I resent cakes: their condescending frilliness, the fact that they don't want me to tell the truth. When someone appeared with tea and cake in the middle of a family psychodrama, what they are really saying was: Let's all eat our feelings instead of expressing them" (p.2). I didn’t feel pressure to give any kind of guide on how to cope with grief. I didn’t even feel particularly pressured to write a positive ending, it just happened. I think because I’ve come from writing comedy I felt so self conscious of the shifts in tone. To have been in comedy for so long, where everything is steeped in irony, to suddenly be so sincere was hard. That’s partly why reading would help me so much because I could see things that were worth saying without joking. The reader ultimately came to the forefront of my mind when I was in the editing process. I’d written everything down and the first version was almost like a journal so then I had to turn it into something more. I was really just aiming to be fair and honest.