Toast: the Story of a Boy’s Hunger is an autobiography written by award-winning food writer and journalist: Nigel Slater. The book is the story of his early life, his relationships and his personal culinary odyssey. In this essay I am going to scrutinize eight quotes from three extracts -Tinned Raspberries, Happy Families and Walnut Whip 2- which portray his perspective regarding his childhood.

The Author’s attitude, perspective and depiction towards and regarding food, changes with his emotions in the Tinned Raspberries extract. This is apparent in the quotation: ‘Raspberries are the most gorgeous of the tinned fruit we have.’ In this quote, the author describes the Raspberries as a ‘gorgeous’ fruit –in this paragraph the author describes himself as being happy and he is in a good mood- ; as the Author’s emotions change, the depiction of the raspberries in addition alter, as portrayed in this quote: ‘slops the soggy fruit back where it came from.’ In this quote the Author describes and sees the fruit as no longer ‘gorgeous’ but as ‘soggy’ as he is no longer in a joyful mood; furthermore, he uses words and phrases like ‘slops’ and ‘back where it came from’ which don’t portray the fruit as ‘gorgeous’ anymore.

The Author’s use of Irony in the Happy Families extract portrays the Author’s emotions in a very strong way. The Happy Families extract is predominantly about how the Author’s relationship with his Dad and his Step-Mother was crumbling; it is basically about how his dad has thought he has created a ‘storybook happy family.’ and how his Dad doesn’t see his Son’s point of view on their relationship with his Step-Mother. The use of irony is evident in many quotes for instance the quote pointed out before: ‘Dad honestly believes he has created a storybook happy family.’ Moreover, the Title: ‘Happy Families’ is somewhat ironic as from the Author’s viewpoint, it wasn’t happy at all. Finally, at the start of the last paragraph or catalogue of opinions, the Author states: ‘I could bring up a few other matters:’ I have underlined the word ‘few’ for the reason that he doesn’t put down a ‘few’ matters, he puts down a whole list! By sarcastically using such words he easily portrays his feelings towards the subject of ‘Happy Families’.