Tag: contemporary fiction

Book Review – Mrs Quinn’s Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford

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About the Book

Jennifer Quinn has a secret. Her love of baking has just won her a spot as a contestant on a primetime TV show. It’s only the second time in fifty-nine years that she’s kept something from her beloved husband Bernard.

She’s about to be whisked into an unfamiliar world of cameras, timed challenges and celebrity judges. She could be in with a chance of being crowned the best baker in Britain.

But, as Mrs Quinn’s quiet ambitions turn into unexpected stardom, the other secret she’s been keeping is in danger of resurfacing. It was supposed to stay hidden forever.

Will Mrs Quinn rise to the challenge? Or, will her success become a recipe for disaster?

Format: Hardback (400 pages) Publisher: Michael Joseph
Publication date: 28th March 2024 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

Mrs Quinn’s Rise to Fame is a charming story whose moral is it’s never too late to make the most of your talents or to try something new. Jenny Quinn’s talent for baking – both sweet and savoury treats – has been known to family and friends for years, and by her husband Bernard for decades, but now it’s getting a wider audience.

Fans of TV’s Great British Bake Off will enjoy the scenes depicting the filming of the TV show: the weekly themes, the rather stern judges, the presenters with their quips and jokes, the last minute upsets and the contestants’ perilous journeys to the judging table with their creations.

It could all be a bit sickly sweet if it wasn’t for the glimpses we get into events earlier in Jenny’s life, memories often linked in Jenny’s mind to particular baked goods. They’re definitely not all good memories and also evoke a time when social attitudes were very different to today. But recipes also have happier associations – with national events, special occasions and even people. The latter is epitomised by Jenny’s recipe book which contains recipes handed down from her grandmother and her father. (It made me think of my rather scruffy old M&S cookbook with its additional scribbled recipes and pages stuck together with various foodstuffs as evidence of its use.)

I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of the tender, loving relationship between Jenny and Bernard, her husband of almost sixty years. I loved Jenny’s description of their marriage as her proudest recipe, tweaked and modified over time. However, growing old together is bittersweet. On the one hand there’s the easy companionship, the shared experiences and memories, but on the other hand there’s the knowledge that, before long, one of you may be left alone. In keeping a secret from him for sixty years, I was sad that Jenny so underestimated Bernard’s generosity of spirit.

Although very different from the type of book I’d usually read, I found Mrs Quinn’s Rise to Fame as satisfying as a toasted teacake on a cold winter’s afternoon. I can see a spin-off recipe book in the making.

I received a proof copy courtesy of Michael Joseph.

In three words: Charming, tender, heart-warming
Try something similar: The Golden Girls’ Getaway by Judy Leigh

About the Author

Olivia Ford has spent the last ten years in entertainment TV, most recently as a story producer. Olivia is a graduate of the Faber Academy where she wrote the beginnings of Mrs Quinn’s Rise to Fame, which was longlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize Trust’s Discoveries Prize. Raised in Lincolnshire, Olivia now lives in London.

Book Review – Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

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About the Book

This is a love story. A story about growing old with grace.

Addie Moore and Louis Waters have been neighbours for years. Now they both live alone, their houses empty of family, their quiet nights solitary. Then one evening Addie pays Louis a visit.

Their brave adventures form the beating heart of Our Souls at Night.

Format: ebook (194 pages) Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 4th June 2015 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

Our Souls at Night was the February pick for the Waterstones Reading book club. It’s fair to say that some members struggled with the absence of quotation marks and found the book a little too slow-paced for their taste. ‘Monotonous’ was one word used, although I would disagree with that.

Addie’s unexpected suggestion that Louis spend his nights with her sets in train a relationship that progresses from quiet conversation about everyday topics to revealing exchanges about events in their lives. Lying side by side at night it’s almost like a confessional allowing them to disclose things they may not have shared before: regrets, feelings of guilt, things they should have done differently. It brings them both comfort.

‘So life hasn’t turned out right for either of us, not the way we expected, he said.
Except it feels good now, at this moment.
Better than I have reason to believe I deserve, he said.’

Gradually their relationship moves from simple companionship to something much deeper.

Our Souls at Night is a quiet, gentle book but no less emotionally powerful for that. I loved the way the author includes little details, such as Louis’s careful preparations for his nightly visits, that reveal so much about the characters.

I really loved Addie for her courage and her determination to ignore what others think about her relationship with Louis. It turns out small town America is not the most forgiving place when it comes to unconventional relationships but I loved Addie’s and Louis’s bold response to the gossipmongers. And when Addie’s grandson Jamie, a troubled child, comes to stay, Louis proves a natural, instinctively knowing how to draw the boy out and bolster his confidence.

I wasn’t alone in finding the behaviour of Gene, Addie’s son, reprehensible. Forcing her to choose between her relationship with Louis and continued contact with her grandson was horrid, if not downright cruel. Gene’s own experiences – a failing marriage, a failed business and spiralling debts – seemed to have made him capable of seeing only mercenary motives in Louis’s friendship with his mother. A bit rich, if you’ll pardon the pun, since it’s Gene who expects his mother to bail him out.

Although sad in some ways, I felt the conclusion of the book left open the possibility that all was not lost, just that it might have to happen in a different way.

I really enjoyed this tender story of love in later life. I was sad to learn that it was the author’s last novel and was published posthumously.

In three words: Intimate, emotional, perceptive

About the Author

Author Kent Haruf

Kent Haruf was born in eastern Colorado. He received his Bachelors of Arts in literature from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1965 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1973. For two years, he taught English in Turkey with the Peace Corps and his other jobs included a chicken farm in Colorado, a construction site in Wyoming, a rehabilitation hospital in Colorado, a hospital in Arizona, a library in Iowa, an alternative high school in Wisconsin, and universities in Nebraska and Illinois.

Haruf is the author of Plainsong, which received the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Maria Thomas Award in Fiction, and The New Yorker Book Award. Plainsong was also a finalist for the 1999 National Book Award. His novel, The Tie That Binds, received a Whiting Foundation Award and a special citation from the Pen/Hemingway Foundation. In 2006, Haruf was awarded the Dos Passos Prize for Literature. All of his novels are set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. Holt is loosely based on Yuma, Colorado, an early residence of Haruf in the 1980s.

Haruf lived with his wife, Cathy, in Salida, Colorado, with their three daughters. He died of cancer on November 30, 2014.