Review
This is a warm, funny delight of a book, good tempered and well intentioned. From time to time everyone needs a light-hearted read and this is it. The story is straightforward: a family suddenly encounters all sorts of difficulties, from having an old parent to stay indefinitely to dealing with a stroppy and rude teenager. One after another, the problems swell up and throb leaving the main character, Ruth, only just able to cope. Her divorced and crabby parents who have not lived together since she was three are both forced to lodge with her and share her family life, which means that meal times are punctuated with appalling rows. The dialogue is very funny, all the more so since the reader is not obliged to join in. Years ago Ruth was told that in times of stress one should mentally transport oneself to a happy, peaceful place. She chooses the inside of a giant cake, one smelling of warm spice and all the other good things that Mrs. Beeton lists. As her family becomes more catastrophic she needs this refuge more and more but a new friend teaches her to make things happen rather than react to them. She climbs out, faces up to things and everyone moves on. Cake, eating cake, sharing it and offering it, beating together sugar and butter to make cake, icing cake and selling cake make up the threads that bind this novel together. A nice idea, a wholesome story and one that leaves the reader wanting more. (Kirkus UK)
Imagine you're inside a cake. . . . That's what beleaguered housewife Ruth Nash does whenever life gets to be too much for her. She can even catch a glimpse of the outside world from the open center of her favorite hideaway: a moist, rich Bundt cake. And these days, she's quite the baker (recipes included) now that her son Wyatt has left her with every pair of sneakers he ever owned and is off to college. His younger sister Camille, meanwhile, sighs a lot and makes snotty remarks. A crisis looms: their dad, Sam, just lost his job as a hospital administrator and has few prospects of getting another, though he's not going to let that get him down. He's a family man who puts up with a mother-in-law in permanent residence and goes so far as to drive to Iowa to pick up Ruth's ne'er-do-well father, an itinerant pianist who just smashed both wrists. Ruth's parents divorced many years before and still can't stop bickering: her mother, Hollis, is outraged that Ruth actually cuts her father's revolting yellow toenails when Guy can't do it himself and that Sam must help the old man pee (a task Hollis takes on, explaining grimly that she has seen that particular organ before). Now that he's unemployed, will Sam realize his cherished dream of becoming a boat-builder? Guy points out that it may be Sam's turn at last, and Ruth gets a brilliant idea: make money by selling her wonderful cakes. And so she does, with a little help from Camille, who has a flair for marketing, and a friend of Sam's who designs gorgeous gift boxes. And that's all, folks. A pleasant trifle but nothing more: the third from the author of Step-Ball-Change (2002) and Julie and Romeo (2000). (Kirkus Reviews)
Product Description
A heartwarming, feelgood family romance from the author of JULIE AND ROMEO. 'This is the story of how my life was saved by cake...' Feisty middle-aged housewife Ruth Hopson's life comes crashing down around her when her hospital administrator husband is made redundant. As the family's financial problems begin to mount, Ruth must also cope with her sulky teenage daughter and warring elderly parents. As she tries to keep the peace in this eccentric, disfunctional household, Ruth's only solace comes from baking cakes. But what begins as a distraction and grows into an obsession just might provide an ingenious solution to the family's dilemmas.
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