It's rare that I review fiction on this blog, but not unprecedented. The deeper I read into Michael Lee West's latest book Gone with a Handsomer Man, I realized most of it centered around food and that not reviewing it here would be a shame.
Teeny moved to Charleston to live in sin with a real estate developer who swooped her off her Aunt's peach farm where Teeny lived after her Mother abandoned her at age eight. He's a third with a long name, but goes by Bing, like the cherries. Teeny, short for Christina, is a self-taught cook and almost every page overflows with a food-reference. Yummy!
Readers easily fall in love with Teeny's downhome ways, southern colloquialisms, and easy grammar, which Bing corrects. Obviously, he's a character whose flaws are many and readers wonder what attracted Teeny to him. He signs her up for a cake baking and decorating class so that she can make their wedding cake, just ten weeks away. He asks for a cake decorated like an eighteen-hole golf course.
When the class is cancelled she returns to the McMansion they share and finds Bing playing badminton in the buff with two other nekkid women. She climbs a peach tree and pelts the three with peaches until they call the police, who remove her and take her to jail. Teeny is charged with assault and spends time in jail--the food there isn't so bad, Teeny thinks-- until Bing's step-mother Dora, bails her out and drops Teeny off at Bing's home in the historic district, the Spencer-Jackson House. She's on probation, and cannot leave South Carolina to return to her Aunt's farm which is in Georgia. And she can't live with Bin, who has a restraining order against her.
Her family's cookbook, the Templeton Family Receipts & Whatnot appears as a comforting, reoccurring character. It was a working book that her mother and aunts wrote in whenever they were peeved. Instead of killing or speaking their mind to someone, they took their anger out by concocting lethal recipes. This let their anger cool. Teeny concocts similar recipes and they're interspersed throughout the book.
In musing how cooking is essential to her identity she reveals:
I love the way the dough sticks to my fingers. I love watching the butter run down the sides of the warm bread. I like taking something whole, like an onion, mincing it into tiny pieces and slipping it into a garlicky risotto. I don't even mind the tears.
Part comedy and part tragedy, this novel engages the reader with Teeny's pluck and charm. Seeing her persevere and win against the odds as they mount against her keeps the story's pace moving along. She races against the clock as a ghost baker for the Picky Palate stretch her skills as she's asked to bake two dozen red velvet cakes with twenty-four hours notice. And then another dozen more red velvet cakes. And then six Italian cream cakes.
West's storytelling and and plot turns add spice to Teeny's circumstances and fill in gaps in her back-story that make readers root for her to find true love, find a job cooking, and clear her name. Most major characters are complex and quirky, though a few minor ones could be better fleshed out. This was a quick read, should please West fans immensely. This is an excellent pick for summer reading by poolside or beachside or if you're spending time in an airport or traveling via rail. Another plot twist in the last paragraph makes me think that West may continue Teeny's story in a follow up to Gone with a Handsomer Man.
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