SOLVED. 90s fiction where a girl's mother is nostalgic about the movie A Taste of Honey. [s]

[Rachel]

A book I read in the mid 1990s which seemed contemporary at the time. It was probably aimed at young adults. The genre was general fiction/coming of age.

The main character was a teenage girl whose mother often reminisced about the film A Taste of Honey, which she had watched when she was young. It became a family joke that any time they watched a film together, the mother would say "Well, it was OK but it wasn't A Taste of Honey". And they started to suggest that after all this time, "even A Taste of Honey wouldn't be A Taste of Honey" (meaning that it wouldn't live up to her expectations if she watched it again). I think at one point they did all watch it together and the daughter was underwhelmed by it.

Annoyingly this detail is the only thing I really remember about the plot. It was general fiction about the teen girl's day to day life. I think she had at least one sibling and a close family. May have been British or American (the film is British but that doesn't necessarily mean anything).

Any help appreciated, sorry about the lack of useful details.

[Ayshe]

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant seems to have that:
""After all this time, even A Taste of Honey won't be A Taste of Honey." In a way, he was right. Not that she didn't still love it — yes, yes, she assured the children, it was just as she'd remembered — but after all, she was a different person ..."

[Rachel]

Thanks Ayshe, you're absolutely right. I got a lot of the surrounding details wrong... really thought this was a YA book! Moving to Solved.

[Ayshe]

You're welcome. I read it a long time ago and I don't remember the mother at all (I found the phrase in Google Books) :) The few details I remember are the sister being thin and having some crazy diets and one brother being mean to the other.

[Rachel]

I think I remembered that detail because I always meant to watch A Taste of Honey myself and see what all the fuss was about... but I never got round to it and it's probably been 15 years since I read the book!