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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Bessette, A. 2010 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Read Alicia Bessette's blogs and view other content on the Penguin Community.
Alicia Bessette writes with compassion and tenderness to illuminate the many unexpected ways people save each others' lives every day-often without even knowing it. Poignant, bittersweet, and strikingly honest, Simply from Scratch is a radiant celebration of friendship and the strength of the human spirit.
Rose-Ellen ("Zell") Carmichael Roy wears her late husband Nick's camouflage apron even when she's not in the kitchen. That's her widow style.
It's been over a year since Nick died tragically during a post-Katrina relief mission in New Orleans. Long enough, according to the grief pamphlets, to have begun to move on with her life. But Zell is still unable to enter her attic, which is full of Nick memories. She hasn't even turned on her oven because cooking was Nick's chore. That is, until she decides to enter the first annual Desserts that Warm the Soul baking contest, hoping to donate the grand prize to Katrina survivors in Nick's memory.
Meanwhile, Zell's nine-year-old neighbor, Ingrid Knox, is learning to cope with the loneliness of growing up without a mother. With an imagination as big as her heart, Ingrid treasures her doting father but begins to plot how she will meet the woman who abandoned her so many years ago. When an embarrassing baking mishap brings Zell and Ingrid together, they form an unlikely friendship that will alter both of their lives forever. Together, and with the help of a lively and loveable cast of friends and family, Zell and Ingrid embark on winning the Desserts that Warm the Soul contest - and learn that through the many sorrows and joys of life, with a little bit of flour and a pinch of love, anything is possible.
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Author Notes
Alicia Bessette was born and raised in central Massachusetts and graduated from La Salle University in Philadelphia. A pianist and freelance writer, she and her husband, novelist Matthew Quick, live near Philadelphia with their adopted racing greyhound, Stella. Simply from Scratch is Alicia's first novel.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bessette's too eager-to-please debut features a young widow's profoundly quirky quest to move on after her husband's death. A year after Zell's husband dies in New Orleans while on a post-Katrina relief mission, Zell, who frequently talks to her dog in pirate-speak, is still a mess. Next door, amazingly precocious nine-year-old Ingrid believes TV celebrity chef Polly Pinch is her mother. Coincidentally, Zell won't go near her kitchen, as it's just too full of painful memories. But after Zell and Ingrid form an unlikely friendship, they enter a Polly Pinch baking contest so Ingrid can meet Polly and Zell can win the $20,000 prize and donate it to Katrina relief. What follows is the requisite learning of lessons about how to cope with grief and loss. For all of the nice intentions, this reads flat, stale, and too tidy. Zell and Ingrid, meanwhile, are victims of cuteness's stranglehold on the narrative. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In this nicely wrought debut, a young widow emerges from her grief thanks to the intrusion of a nine-year-old neighbor and an unwinnable cooking contest.As the novel opens, Rose-Ellen, Zell to her friends, nearly burns down her house. Attempting to enter the Polly Pinch Desserts That Warm the Soul Baking Contest (a satire of the perky Rachael Ray), Zell doesn't notice there's a wrapped present in her preheating oven. The present was left over a year ago by her late husband Nick ina favorite hiding place from the noncooking Zell, and now it is a cindered mess, left unopened and thrown in the attic. The fire serves as a happy catalystshe begins to reconnect with old friends whom she's pushed away, and she meets her new neighbor Ingrid, the little girl whose misdelivered Polly Pinch magazine inspired Zell's attempt at baking. It's not the baking that interests either of themZell wants the $20,000 cash prize to donate to a Hurricane Katrina relief fundNick, who worked for their small-town Massachusetts newspaper, was killed in a freak accident while photographing the rebuilding in New Orleanswhile Ingrid is obsessed with Polly Pinch because the motherless girl is convinced Polly is her real mom. Zell goes along with this (though she admits, if the redheaded, freckled Polly Pinch were African-American, she would look an awful lot like Ingrid), but the wild story alienates Ingrid at school, and so she and Zell bond and begin baking together. While Ingrid's hunky dad is busy with law school, Zell, her beloved greyhound Ahab and Ingrid spend countless hours in the kitchen creating perfectly inedible desserts. In a story about loneliness, the two are a perfect fit, both attempting in their own ways to re-create connections to their missing loved ones. Then the unthinkable happensthey finally make something good enough to get in the runoffs and are invited on the show, where Ingrid can finally meet her "mother."Quietly charming, with a dash of romance.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Married couple Rose-Ellen (Zell) and Nick are childhood sweethearts, surrounded by longtime friends and family in the quiet Massachusetts town in which they grew up. When Nick dies suddenly on a relief trip to post-Katrina New Orleans, Zell is plunged into despair. More than a year later, she is still wallowing in grief when she decides to enter a baking contest to win a prize she intends to donate to the relief effort in Nick's memory. Zell is not a baker and inadvertently gains the help of Ingrid, the nine-year-old food-obsessed neighbor for whom she babysits. Together, they brainstorm disastrous recipes, while Zell finds the courage to accept Nick's death. Verdict Fans of Cecelia Ahern's PS, I Love You will find a lot to like here. This strong, richly detailed debut novel, with a truly lovable heroine, explores an old theme, but the spins and turns the story takes along the way are well worth the ride.-Mara Dabrishus, Carnegie Lib. of Pittsburgh (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.