Back to that country that no longer exists.
-- Narrator (Prologue)

Importance: In the novel's one-page prologue, a young woman approaches the narrator and starts asking her about her past as a chef on the mountain. Although decades have passed since this experience, the narrator is instantly transported. Her immediate temporal relocation in this moment from the end of the prologue captures and conveys the narrator's complex relationship with the past and the author's interest in thematically exploring said dynamic.

For years I'd fed, survived, swallowed my portions of gray—but had I hungered for pleasure?
-- Narrator (chapter 1)

Importance: The narrator abandons her life in England and relocates to the mountain country, hoping this new setting will change her life. When she sees the strawberries in the kitchen, she is surprised to discover the way in which the produce moves her, emotionally and physiologically. Rather than simply pleasing her, the strawberries compel her to contemplate her own...