The Heart-Shaped Tin: Stories of Love, Loss and Kitchen Objects

After her 23-year marriage ended, food writer Wilson (The Secret of Cooking) was doing laundry when she knocked to the ground the heart-shaped tin she’d used to bake her wedding cake, sparking her to reflect on the hopeful notion of marriage it had once—but no longer—stood for. Exploring how “kitchen objects can have a life of their own,” the author uses items ranging from a salt shaker to corkscrews to investigate impermanence, loss, and what it means to care for a loved one. In “The Kitchen Table,” Wilson mourns her marriage and the family life she and her ex-husband once shared at the dinner table (“The very wood seemed to be full of him, as if his hands had left traces on the grain”). “My Grandfather’s Teapot” finds Wilson ordering a secondhand teapot that she later discovers was designed by a long-dead grandfather to whom she’s able to feel more connected. The strongest essays center Wilson’s personal history (her divorce, her mother’s death, her children aging); less successful are pieces that revolve around objects that were meaningful to others (a pair of “very old tongs shaped like a pair of clapping hands” prized be a pie maker) or expound more conceptually on the notion of objects having special resonance. Still, this contains plenty of poignant moments. (Nov.)