Beautifully written, lean and nourishing, Candice Chung’s Chinese Parents Dont Say I Love You is an astute, moving and often amusing memoir that does a profoundly affecting dive into how rituals around family dining are used as a vehicle for expressing what we really want to say, and how we really feel: “A meal is a shape. It is a container into which we pour our cravings.”

Distant from her Cantonese parents, when food journalist Candice finds herself single after a decade in a relationship with a man they never met, she invites her parents to join her on trips to restaurants she’s commissioned to review in their Sydney home city.

Over time, over dozens of shared dinners, bridges are built, and love is shared, though the word itself is never spoken. Wise, generous and honest, Chung also ponders the observations of other writers and thinkers, and shares how she finds a new soulmate, “the geographer”, through the pandemic. And all the while, slowly but surely, shared experiences over food provide the language needed to express what she and her loved ones really mean to each other: “In Cantonese, the word cooked or ripen is also used to describe the closeness of a relationship. Close friends or family members will describe their bond this way, as in ‘we are very cooked’. I like the idea of waiting for intimacy to ripen. Some things can’t be rushed”.

Set to be loved by readers who relish reflective words that cut to the core of real life, and by those who yearn to feel closer to loved ones, Chinese Parents Dont Say I Love You is a very special, enriching book.