Available:*
Library | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Main Library | Book | FICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Ruth loves to bake cakes. When she is alone, she dreams up variations on recipes. When she meditates, she imagines herself in the warm, comforting center of a gigantic bundt cake. If there is a crisis, she bakes a cake; if there is a reason to celebrate, she bakes a cake. Ruth sees it as an outward manifestation of an inner need to nurture her family--which is a good thing, because all of a sudden that family is rapidly expanding. First, her mother moves in after robbers kick in her front door in broad daylight. Then Ruth's father, a lounge singer, who she's seen only occasionally throughout her life, shatters both wrists and, having nowhere else to go, moves in, too. Her mother and father just happen to hate each other with a deep and poisonous emotion reserved only for life-long enemies. Oh, yes indeed! Add to this mix two teenagers, a gainfully employed husband who is suddenly without a job, and a physical therapist with the instincts of a Cheryl Richardson and you've got a delightful and amusing concoction that comes with its own delicious icing. One of Jeanne Ray's specialties is giving us believable, totally likable characters, engaged in the large and small dramas and amusements of life.Eat Cakeis whimsical, warm, and satisfying.Eat Cakeis Jeanne Ray at her best. Pull up a chair and eat cake!
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Imagine you're inside a cake. . . . That's what beleaguered housewife Ruth Nash does whenever life gets to be too much for her. She can even catch a glimpse of the outside world from the open center of her favorite hideaway: a moist, rich Bundt cake. And these days, she's quite the baker (recipes included) now that her son Wyatt has left her with every pair of sneakers he ever owned and is off to college. His younger sister Camille, meanwhile, sighs a lot and makes snotty remarks. A crisis looms: their dad, Sam, just lost his job as a hospital administrator and has few prospects of getting another, though he's not going to let that get him down. He's a family man who puts up with a mother-in-law in permanent residence and goes so far as to drive to Iowa to pick up Ruth's ne'er-do-well father, an itinerant pianist who just smashed both wrists. Ruth's parents divorced many years before and still can't stop bickering: her mother, Hollis, is outraged that Ruth actually cuts her father's revolting yellow toenails when Guy can't do it himself and that Sam must help the old man pee (a task Hollis takes on, explaining grimly that she has seen that particular organ before). Now that he's unemployed, will Sam realize his cherished dream of becoming a boat-builder? Guy points out that it may be Sam's turn at last, and Ruth gets a brilliant idea: make money by selling her wonderful cakes. And so she does, with a little help from Camille, who has a flair for marketing, and a friend of Sam's who designs gorgeous gift boxes. And that's all, folks. A pleasant trifle but nothing more: the third from the author of Step-Ball-Change (2002) and Julie and Romeo (2000). Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
