The next book I read during my sunshine reading marathon was Bethan Roberts' The Good Plain Cook. It appealed to me because of the myriad of reviews from varied broadsheets and magazines I really admire. However, I found this novel to be a little too predictable. A nineteen year old girl, Kitty, is searching for a new job to escape from living with her controlling sister, she responds to an ad for a 'plain cook' at Ellen Steinberg's house. Ellen Steinberg is an American who is living with a married man, George, and her daughter, Geenie. It is a rather unconventional arrangement and most of the town are talking about her and wondering what it is like inside that house. Kitty is also attracted to all the mystery and so unfolds a rather dreary novel about class, love, sexual awakening and cooking.
Kitty cannot cook, Kitty has never been in love and she has always understood her position in the world. Kitty has also had no sexual experience, she has never even seen herself naked in a mirror! Ellen is pretending to be 'bohemian' but it is all just an act, though her past sexual exploration is covered with some shock and awe by the author. A woman in the 1930s paying for sex from a hairdresser! I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be shocked by this, or by Ellen's constant need to tell us and Geenie, that being naked is so great! (By the way, all the ! after sentences are showing my own disbelief that this is a major plot point of the novel. Sexual awakening in the countryside in England! My little cheeks are flushing!) I felt that Roberts found writing about sex shocking and all I can say is it was not shocking at all!
George is a middle-class (he works in publishing and is supposed to be writing a novel or poetry) Communist. He believes that everyone is equal, but we rarely see him lift a finger to do anything. Instead he is, as Arthur the gardener points out, pretending to care, he hasn't actually helped pull down the wall inside, neither does he help with the gardening, he just stands around. To be honest George is a little like this novel. The reviews would have you believe this to be a brave look at 1930s class and the levelling power of love. Everyone is on equal pegging when they are heart-broken right?
The only character I had any interest in at all was Ellen's daughter, Geenie. I hoped she would see right through the thinly veiled characters of Kitty, Ellen and George and join the reader in finding them wanting. But even Geenie, poor neglected little girl, is left with only half a character. Her rebellions that gave me such hope only ended in pathetic half-hearted gestures at remedy.
All in all, I didn't really enjoy this novel. Especially after reading The Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, I found Roberts' world and characters to be incredibly lacking. Even the ending was unsatisfying, or perhaps I no longer cared for the characters and therefore found the last few chapters incredibly dull and incomplete. I must say that by the end I was incredibly glad to close the book and go off in search of something better.
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