Having very much enjoyed Jenny Sanders’ last collection of short stories (The Magnificent Moustache and Beyond), I was delighted when she asked me to read her latest. I expected more wit, sparkle and clever characterisation and I wasn’t disappointed. Any book which contains a story entitled, “The Surprising Power of Cake” is a winner with me.
The eponymous Charlie Peach lives in a community surrounded by successful fruit and vegetable growers. He dreams of cultivating melons, but this being England, his vision is doomed to fail. The poor chap can’t even manage common or garden crops and it is only when he reads a gardening magazine at the dentist’s that the idea of growing pumpkins occurs to him. It becomes a bit of an obsession, to the extent of finding out that they like country music which helps them to swell. The denouement of the story is curiously touching and there are plenty of laughs along the way, many gourd-related.
The second story introduces us to the reluctant ambassador to Carletia, a country in an unspecified location where everything is in a terrible mess. The previous ambassador was last seen in public sitting naked in a fountain being pecked by birds. His successor, the efficient Kit Percival, is trying to get to the bottom (as it were) of this. Things aren’t great in the embassy, particularly as the new ambassador has been tasked with building bridges with the President of the country, still deeply offended by Sir Percival’s behaviour.
Poor Kit’s attempts at putting on a show-stopping occasion are foiled. However, pulling out twenty years’ worth of rubbish from the dusty cupboards of the Embassy gives him a brilliant idea and the Gala Dinner is a huge success. The theme running through this story is making do and mending, pulling together in a crisis and – perhaps inevitably – recycling.
The stately homes of England don’t stand quite so beautifully these days as they did when Noel Coward was singing about them. The Beasley-Babbington brothers are in a pickle. Their elderly great-aunt has left them the ancestral home which is falling down. What to do? Neither of them like the idea of the place being pulled down but no one wants a crumbling castle with wires chewed by mice and rotten floorboards.
At the auction house where they hope to raise some cash by selling off antiques, they run into their eccentric sister who is the entrepreneur of the family. Having been left an Old Master by her great-aunt, she has sold it and become enormously rich, while at the same time inventing a tincture for bunions. How will Belinda use her money? And will the old castle turn back into the heart of the surrounding community?
“The Viticulture Venture” is a touching tale of a grandfather and his grandson. The grandfather, who served in the Second World War, has a vast collection of rare wines and due to some poor photocopying, young Shaun is forced to become a sommelier at a wine tasting. Unable to find the key for the wine cellar, he improvises, making his own wines out of fruit juice and lemonade. As the afternoon wears on, increasingly desperate, he cribs from notes in a wine magazine, adding honey, vanilla and even green pepper to his concoctions. Fortunately, his grandfather arrives home just in time to explain what has been going on and the real wine tasting takes place the next week. A charming little tale.
In the fifth story, “Sovereign Secrets”, we return to the land of Slopingsideways which featured in Jenny’s previous book, “The Magnificent Moustache and Beyond.” Although the issues with an outburst of mobile phone mania have been dealt with, the King and Queen are rather bored and without any drive to perform their usual duties. They embark on a journey of discovery, the King training to become a plumber and the Queen taking up painting and decorating. Their new hobbies cheer them up no end, both kept secret from each other.
As the concert which ends the Annual Arts Festival draws near, the perennial problem of not having enough ladies’ toilets rears its ugly head. To make things worse, as the married monarchs are plucking up courage to reveal their secrets, the toilets flood and the ceilings collapse at the festival venue. But that’s OK, because we have a pair of royal rescuers!
The Surprising Power of Cake
The heroine of the final story (“The Surprising Power of Cake”) is from a formerly wealthy family who have fallen on hard times. She has inherited the family flair for inventing and spends her days in a tumbledown house trying to come up with a brilliant idea to restore the good name of her family amongst the inventor community. This being Jenny Sanders’ writing, we are taken on a funny and sometimes touching journey with lots of happenstance, kindness and serendipity. Does Nora manage to invent something truly life-changing? You’ll have to read the book to find out.
You can order your very own copy of the book from Amazon from 15th November and get your hands on it from all good bookshops. If you’d like a signed copy (and let’s face it, is there a greater thrill on this earth?), then all you have to do is visit Jenny’s Facebook author page.
I received an Advance Reader’s Copy but was under no obligation to provide a favourable review.