Published: 2015
Author: Sarah Vaughan
More to this than meets the eye
It’s that time of year again – Wednesday nights are sacrosanct and anyone who dares to whisper a hint of spoiler is shunned from my social circle. The Great British Bake-Off is back and I’m in baked goods heaven. The success of Bake-Off has led to a huge number of books with cakes, cake shops, girls eating cake, girls wearing cake patterned dresses and so on. The Art of Baking Blind
In 1966 Kathleen Eaden, the wife of the owner of the upmarket Eaden Supermarkets, is a baking superstar. She is the perfect woman, the perfect wife and the perfect baker. She supports her millionaire husband as he expands his retail empire and she has written the perfect baking bible. In the present day Eadens are running a Bake-Off like competition (complete with pseudo Mary and Paul) for the new Mrs Eaden to represent their brand – Jenny, Claire, Vicki, Karen and Mike are all baking to fill a hole in their lives, even if they don’t realise that themselves and by the end of the competition they will discover the truth about both themselves and the perfect Mrs Eaden.
I loved The Art of Baking Blind, it was so much more than the light and forgettable chick-lit story that I was expecting. There was real depth and feeling in this book and each of the characters had their own narratives to be explored. Only widower Mike felt slightly underwritten. As someone who has been known to close the kitchen door and bake (admittedly badly) for days on end when I’m feeling particularly down this book really hit home, I felt that it recognised something within me and many others and how creative activities – be it baking, writing, painting etc can help us express our feelings or as in the cases of some of the characters in this story, hide something deeper which needs to be set free.
The characters’ stories were all believable and while I don’t have children I immediately felt that Vicki’s conflict between loving her toddler son and wanting more from her life than being a stay-at-home mum was beautifully written and would strike a chord with any woman in that situation. I’m sure lots of people could also recognise parts of their own lives in each of the stories told – the struggling young single mum and the empty nester with the cheating husband being especially vividly told.
The baking scenes and depictions of the food that the characters made were absolutely delicious and as I’m writing this review I actually have my books beside me wondering which cakes I can make to fill the hungry hole that this book has created.
Just as there was more to Kathleen Eaden than it initially seemed, so too The Art of Baking Blind is much richer, more emotionally satisfying and deeper than you might originally suspect. I loved the writing, loved the story and loved that the story exceeded all my expectations. This is definitely one of my books of the year.