Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Poor Old Peggy, 18 Sep 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
When we get to the end of the book, we find out that this novel was inspired by the life of Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter Pegeen. Until I discovered this, I had wondered what on earth made Bethan Roberts pick a tale that seemed so completely devoid of a point. It's not often that I read a book and think to myself, but nothing happened! As Bethan Roberts has two MAs and teaches creative writing, I kept searching for something with a bit more spark. To be fair, it did get interesting in the last couple of chapters and there was enough to keep me reading to the end, but I did that mostly from as sense of duty to the world of books.
Bethan looks like a lovely person; young, bright and smiling on the cover and I wish I liked her book better. It seemed more like a well researched exercise in creating a 1930s atmosphere than a novel. Here and there a brand name of a product that no longer exists, the careful description of stockings, needlework and hair care.
I'm not sorry I spent the time reading it, but it felt like eating candy floss instead of an apple, a bit too insubstantial.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable, 8 Jul 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
A loosely based fictional account of the life of Peggy Guggenheim and the time she spent in England with her daughter, her lover and his daughter, this book is intriguing and enjoyable - and an insight into an unusual lifestyle in the mid 1930s.
When local girl, Kitty Allen answers an advert for a 'good plain cook', she gets a few surprises, as the household is very different from anywhere that she has previously worked. Some of the differences are pleasing - even encouraging; some take a lot more getting used to. However, first of all she has to learn to be the good, plain cook that she purported to be!
On arrival, she finds a solitary shoe on the lawn ... getting steadily wetter - so takes it in to her 'interview' - only to be given it as a 'starting present' (without its mate!) Then she meets the daughter of the house - a rather precocious, bright but lonely 11 year old whom she becomes rather fond of.
The story develops nicely with a lovely picture of upstairs, downstairs life in a very bohemian household in the immediate pre-war years.
A good, gentle summer read. Enjoy!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good plain cook, plain dull book, 26 Nov 2008
Good-looking, young, smiley, female; clearly, Bethan Roberts is what today's publishers want. What a pity, though, that she hasn't been sent away to develop her writing; in ten years time she might be worth reading. (If this sounds harsh, consider ... would this book have found a publisher had it been written by a 52-year-old balding, bespectacled man ... of course it wouldn't!) Of course, Ms Roberts can hardly be blamed for grasping the opportunities that present themselves to her ... But the mind rather boggles at the covernotes that inform us that she is teaching creative writing!
The Good Plain Cook, as somebody else has pointed out below, is a long, plodding student's exercise. (Incidentally, the reviewers' comments in the product description refer to an earlier book The Pools, not this one.)
There isn't much of a story - you won't be any the wiser about Peggy Guggenheim - nor does Roberts convey any sense of the 1930s. (Even google research, or simply asking her granny, could have told her that the popular orange lipstick was Tangee, not Tangine.)
As stodgy as tapioca pudding!
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