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About the Book

Book cover of Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson

For Pumkin Patterson, family is complicated.

There’s her mother Paulette, who ignores her. There’s her beloved Auntie Sophie, who her mother resents. And there’s her grandmother, who has always played favourites. Whenever tensions rise, Pumkin retreats to the kitchen – creating the Jamaican bread puddings and coconut drops that have always given her comfort.

When Sophie moves to France for work, she vows to send for her niece in one year’s time. But in order to follow her aunt, Pumkin has a mountain to climb. Starting with the question of how she’ll manage to escape her mother, and make enough money to get to Marseille.

Inspired by her skills in the kitchen, Pumkin turns to her community in the hope that she can sell enough sweet treats to bake her way out. But when her school and her mother discover her plan, everything she’s worked so hard for may slip through her fingers . . .

Format: Hardcover (368 pages) Publisher: Michael Joseph
Publication date: 11th April 2024 Genre: Fiction

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My Review

‘Pumkin, don’t make people tell you what you can and cannot achieve… If you’re determined to do something, Pumkin, then find a way’. Pumkin takes her Aunt Sophie’s advice to heart and embarks on a mission to earn enough money to take a French language test that will allow her to join her aunt in France and continue her schooling there. There are plenty of obstacles in her path and it’s her determination to overcome them and her resourcefulness in doing so that makes the book so engaging.

The odds seem to be against her from the start. Money is tight, the house they live in is rundown, she gets little if no help from her mother, the man her mother claims is Pumkin’s father is a threatening presence and she has to fend for herself – shopping, cleaning, cooking – most of the time. However, Pumkin is fortunate to encounter a few people who help her on her journey, in particular the wonderful Boots, an employee at the French Embassy where her Aunt Sophie works. A local cafe owner spots Pumkin’s talent for baking and provides her with ingredients in return for tasty treats and her friend Tamara lends use of her family’s kitchen. Desperate for money to fulfil her ambitions, Pumkin even starts an illicit trade in her cakes and biscuits at school. So delicious are they that it wins over even the snootiest of her classmates.

It’s not all sweetness however as the story also tackles social stigma, absent parenting and poverty. Pumkin is conscious she lives in a very different, poorer area of Kingston than her classmates. When invited to sleepovers at other girls’ houses, she knows she won’t be able to reciprocate. ‘There’s no way I can tell them I live on Potters Lane: nobody in this circle lives on a Lane. They all live on Drives, and Roads and Closes, and Circles. So now they’ll know I don’t belong here at all.’ Hiding her background necessitates engaging in subterfuge which at times is quite heart-breaking to witness and she often cuts a lonely figure.

Much of the dialogue in the book is rendered in Jamaican patois which for non-speakers takes a little bit of time to get used to but is well worth the effort. I thought it just added to the vibrancy and authenticity of the story. If I have one reservation it’s that things are wrapped up pretty quickly at the end of the book and not necessarily in the way you might imagine given everything that’s gone before.

Sweetness in the Skin is a lovely coming-of-age story that is just as delightful as its vibrant cover.

I received a proof copy courtesy of Michael Joseph.

In three words: Heart-warming, engaging, tender
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About the Author

Ishi Robinson, author of Sweetness in the Skin

Ishi Robinson was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. A Canadian citizen, she has lived in Bern, Toronto, Rome, London and now lives in Berlin with her Czech husband. Her first published work was a short story in Jamaica’s national newspaper when she was eleven years old. At seventeen, she sent a letter to her father from Switzerland that he thought was so funny he sent it to the other national newspaper, which snagged her a weekly column on teenage life in Kingston. She also previously wrote a weekly column on life as an expat in Rome for a now defunct online magazine. She got back into fiction writing in Berlin, from where she has published short stories in several online publications and one anthology. Sweetness in the Skin is her first novel.

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About the Book

Book cover of Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler

Robert Quinlan and his wife Darla teach at Florida State University. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee, solitary jogging and separate offices.

For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain below the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert’s own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy, who became estranged from the family as the Vietnam War intensified.

William Quinlan, Robert and Jimmy’s father, a veteran of World War II, is coming to the end of his life, and aftershocks of war ripple across all their lives once again when Jimmy refuses to appear at his father’s bedside.

And a disturbed homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a devastating impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family.

Format: Paperback (256 pages) Publisher: No Exit Press
Publication date: 27th October 2016 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

Perfume River is one of the books by Robert Olen Butler I’ve chosen to be part of my Backlist Burrow reading challenge in which I’m setting out to read two books from the backlists of six authors whose books I’ve enjoyed. The other book by Robert Olen Butler I plan to read is A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

The Vietnam War provides the backdrop to Perfume River and it has cast a shadow over the lives of all the book’s characters.

Robert signed up to serve in Vietnam, believing this was what his father, a veteran of World War II, wanted. The refusal of Robert’s brother, Jimmy, to do the same has caused a rift that has never been healed.

Although assigned a non-operational role in Vietnam, Robert’s part in an incident which brought him unexpectedly face-to-face with the human cost of war has haunted him. It’s a memory he’s tried to suppress but which periodically rises unbidden to the surface. ‘But he still thinks: I was not meant to be here. I was not meant to live this life I’ve led. I was meant to die long ago. Long long ago.’ It’s a secret he’s felt unable to share with anyone, including his wife, Darla, especially since she was violently opposed to the Vietnam War – and believed he was too. Unbeknownst to him, he has misinterpreted her feelings about his involvement.

The author deftly sketches a portrait of a marriage which has staled but not decayed beyond repair. Robert and Darla lead largely separate lives, each engrossed in their own area of academic interest, working in their separate studies on different floors of their house. Yet perhaps the emotional distance is not so great than it cannot be bridged.

Perfume River is a story of misunderstandings and of seeking to live up to the expectations of others – or rather what you believe are the expectations of others. There are no chapter breaks and the book moves seamlessly between different points of view, but I was drawn into the lives of the characters and the consequences of the choices they’ve made.

In three words: Perceptive, acutely-observed, eloquent
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About the Author

Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and sixteen other novels including Hell, A Small Hotel, Perfume River, and the Christopher Marlowe Cobb series. He is also the author of six short story collections and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and received the 2013 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

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