Candy and Me by Hilary Liftin. From the back cover: “Acclaimed for its fresh, wry humour and candid confessional quality, Candy and Me unwraps the universal desire for connection and confection as Hilary Liftin chronicles her epic love affair with all things sweet. As she recounts her record-setting candy consumption, she also reveals the ways in which candy has seen her through many of life’s hurdles.”
This is going to sound like an insult, but it isn’t, I swear: Candy and Me is perfect reading for waiting rooms or subway commutes or any of those occasions during which you can’t/shouldn’t lose yourself in a book. Not that it’s boring. No, it’s a very entertaining memoir, but because Liftin recounts her stories of incredible candy obsession in tidy little vignettes and because candy – not slavery or abandonment or murder – is always at the centre, it’s what I’d call a light but intelligent read.
And you don’t have to be candy-bewitched to appreciate her story, either. I am most definitely not a candy lover (chocolate – oh yes; candy – not so much), which probably made her overwhelming love for it all the more intriguing. It’s kind of like when you find out a new friend loves something like Nascar or hunting and you try not to be judgmental, but you’re just so curious and, well, judgmental and everything comes out like, “You what? Really? Why? Really? But, but…Seriously?”
Oh, and I also learned that what we call Rockets in Canada are called Smarties in the States. So what do Americans call their Smarties? Nothing, because they don’t have Smarties. No Smarties, which should ensure my kids never cross the border permanently. I really don’t care because the best way to eat Smarties is to crack off and discard those stupid candy shells first. Right?
The thing with candy is that I can’t help but associate it with food colouring, which means I also associate it with eye-twitching craziness and a desire to try and run through a wall (as a kid I ate large quantities at a time). Chocolate is one of the top five reasons to exist, but after watching the documentary on all those slave kids in Africa harvesting cocoa beans and cutting themselves with machetes, I’m trying to figure out what to replace it with. Then I thought – white chocolate! But it’s still made with cocoa butter. Fair trade chocolate might be expensive, but keeping a good balance of chocolytes in the blood stream is important too. We may have to re-evaluate our finances to work it all out.
Yeah, that documentary was an eye-opener. Delicious chocolatey heaven on the one hand; horrifying, inhumane child slave labour on the other. Tough call. If we sell off the house and live in cardboard boxes by the river, we can afford the fair trade stuff for a while…
, , , , , and this conversation all started because you let your guard down and got cable. Had you stuck with CTV and CBC you would have been forced to watch mindless, non thought provoking shows. But now you’ve gone and ruined it – for God sakes, it’s a box of smarties. Eat away my friends – just remember you’re trying to sell the house so no running full tilt into walls. It’s a bugger to re-plaster and have house showings
We aren’t getting any showings anyway so if Robin wants to run into the walls, I’m all for it. That sounds like good entertainment to me. Way funnier than Newsworld documentaries about child slaves.