This is a wonderful book about the relationship between a mother and daughter. It’s a lighthearted read, but at the same time it’s tragic and heart-breaking. It somehow manages to blend both emotions seemlessly, and I felt a loss once I reached the end of the novel. I adore books about cooking, and while this one is not a cooking or travel memoir (like my normal go-to books), food is an integral theme that both brings together and tears apart the main characters. Meg, a 21 year old girl from England, is struggling to find the truth about her past before her mother passes away from a deadly disease. Meg’s mother, Val, has always filled Meg’s head with impossible stories of beans running around the kitchen to escape being eaten, meringue that is so fluffy that it fills the kitchen to the ceiling, and she swears that Meg’s father, whom Meg never met, was killed in a fluke pastry making accident. As Meg struggles to piece together the truth before it is too late, she reluctantly learns to accept her mother’s tall tales as she realizes they were used as a coping mechanism to erase the pain of their past. This is a wonderful and quick read, and I highly recommend this for a lazy day at the beach.
100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is next in the queue. I’ve heard many great things about this book over the years, and look forward to seeing what it’s all about!
What books are y’all reading this summer?
Sounds a little like Big Fish but with a mother/daughter take.
I'm doing a summer reading challenge so I've been reading a lot of books. I recommend picking up Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler. Such a good book!
Thanks for the suggestion Lauren! I'll have to look into that book.
I'm making my way through The Book Thief – very good!