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Title: Eat Cake : A Novel by Jeanne Ray ISBN: 0-609-61004-X Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books Pub. Date: 27 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (24 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: In a word -- yum!
Comment: Reading this book is like munching on cake -- homemade cake, not too sweet, with just the right amount of icing. The pages turn quickly and you begin to relax and feel good about the world. And you're tempted: can you get another piece later?
The book's opening is a winner. Ruth, attending a stress clinic, encounters the common exercise to take yourself to a safe place. She has trouble at first but soon realizes her safe space is right inside a warm Bundt cake. Makes me hungry just thinking about it!
Ruth's life is about baking cakes -- from scratch. She bakes to relax. She bakes to win friends. She bakes -- well, to bake! And ultimately baking is what saves her and her family batches of trouble. Her husband's job disappears in a merger. Her father, wrists broken, comes to stay awhile. Her daughter is being a typical teenager. And under the same roof is her mother who hisses and spits like a cat at the sight of her ex-husband, Ruth's father.
Now, Ruth realizes, she really needs those stress classes. Instead, she finds inspiration from her father's physical therapist, a character the dust jacket compares to Cheryl Richardson, and her father himself.
Ruth begins a new venture and that's where the book gets a little heavy on the icing. Ruth is immensely gifted, but talent is not enough, whether you're a baker or a writer. Miraculously, everyone in Ruth's family -- as well as the helpful physical therapist -- contributes a skill or connection to the enterprise.
Plausible? Yes. The author of Girls with the Grandmother Faces published her first book with the help of her family, around her own kitchen table. Lucky? Also yes. In some families the parents would be whiny wet blankets, the daughter a teen pregnancy waiting to happen and the college-age son a delinquent.
I must admit I'm a little biased against books that present starting a business as nearly effortless. However, sometimes you want to enjoy a cake and forget the calories. And sometimes you want to enjoy a well-written feel-good story where the fairy godmother is a composite of most of the folks in the heroine's life and it takes six months, not a wave of the wand, to move the reader to a happy ending.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Very Satisfying Read
Comment: I discovered Ms. Ray before I started reading her daughter's books, Ms. Ann Patchett. I'm not sure how I found her, just something about the premise of Julie and Romeo struck a cord, so I read it and enjoyed it so much. Well, then I read her second novel and enjoyed it also, so I was thrilled when this showed up on my amazon recommendations. I curled up with this book and read it in one day, with very few interruptions, and I was so involved with the characters, that by the end of the book, I felt as if I knew them. This is a fun, hopeful read and had some lines in it that I quoted out loud to the family, much to their dismay, since I then had to explain who everyone was and what was going on.
Anyway, read this book when you need a warm, lovely diversion from your life. The main character sees herself in cakes to relieve stress, I used this author's book as my therapy. Thank you Ms. Ray.
Rating: 4
Summary: A baker's delight
Comment: After finishing this book, all I could think of was to scour my cookbooks to bake some delicious cakes! It's a sweet and delightful story that makes you forget your troubles for a time. I love novels with food themes in it ~~ the only problem is, it makes me hungry all the time! So if you're on a diet, this book is not to read ~~ it will make your mouth water at some of those cake names (and the recipes in the back too!)!
Ruth escapes to the center of a cake whenever she's stressed out. She's stressed out plenty ~~ a kid in college, another kid at home, a husband who lost his job, a mother who moved in with them, her father who broke both wrists and needed someone to care for him ~~ it was enough to send anyone to run screaming from their house. And what does Ruth do? She escapes by baking lots of cakes. And that was just the beginning of a career for her.
It's a short novel but oh so delightful to read! You keep turning the pages to keep reading more of a world that could be yours if you follow your dreams. It's one of the better novels I've read in awhile.
2-10-04
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Title: Step-Ball-Change by Jeanne Ray ISBN: 0451410742 Publisher: Onyx Books Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Julie and Romeo by Jeanne Ray ISBN: 0451409973 Publisher: Onyx Books Pub. Date: 12 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Say When : A Novel by Elizabeth Berg ISBN: 0743411366 Publisher: Atria Books Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman ISBN: 0679463135 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 17 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Lucia, Lucia : A Novel by Adriana Trigiani ISBN: 1400060052 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 08 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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