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A review by lucyp21
Grace's Table by Sally Piper
4.0
This was another book that I would have not picked up of my own accord but received it in a book box and decided I wanted something short to read for this reading challenge.
This book is about Grace's 70th birthday where she is having a meal with her children, grandchildren and friends. As she is cooking the meal with her daughter, she thinks about her life and how food connected her to her parents, her friends, her husband and her children. As we learn more about her, there are more and more hints there is something wrong within the family itself.
I really enjoyed Grace as a character. I was very sympathetic towards her, even when some of her past actions were far less sympathetic. She's a woman of 70, who rebels at the thought of her life being over simply because she has gotten old, and has a complicated relationship with her two older children. She has a very uncomplicated relationship with her grandchildren but it was lovely to see a mixture of personalities within the family and seeing some resentment stirred up between the lot of them. These are people who probably wouldn't spend any time together if they weren't family and the fact that they are and they love each other makes matters all the more complicated.
The book was a much quicker read than I had expected. I was thinking it was going to be a slower, more character-driven book than it was and while the characters were definitely the centre of things, we kept getting hints throughout the book about what is going on in this family and it kept me reading because I wanted to find out what happened between Grace and her husband and why her children were so resistant to her new boyfriend. I spent so much of my time in this book disliking Des, only to get a whole new perspective on him at the end at the same time as Grace and it was really well done.
Anger and how poisonous it can be if you hold onto it was such a good, well-done theme of this book and I especially liked how it talked about grief. Not to mention all the descriptions of food in this book made me very hungry and I got cooking halfway through.
4.5 stars!
This book is about Grace's 70th birthday where she is having a meal with her children, grandchildren and friends. As she is cooking the meal with her daughter, she thinks about her life and how food connected her to her parents, her friends, her husband and her children. As we learn more about her, there are more and more hints there is something wrong within the family itself.
I really enjoyed Grace as a character. I was very sympathetic towards her, even when some of her past actions were far less sympathetic. She's a woman of 70, who rebels at the thought of her life being over simply because she has gotten old, and has a complicated relationship with her two older children. She has a very uncomplicated relationship with her grandchildren but it was lovely to see a mixture of personalities within the family and seeing some resentment stirred up between the lot of them. These are people who probably wouldn't spend any time together if they weren't family and the fact that they are and they love each other makes matters all the more complicated.
The book was a much quicker read than I had expected. I was thinking it was going to be a slower, more character-driven book than it was and while the characters were definitely the centre of things, we kept getting hints throughout the book about what is going on in this family and it kept me reading because I wanted to find out what happened between Grace and her husband and why her children were so resistant to her new boyfriend. I spent so much of my time in this book disliking Des, only to get a whole new perspective on him at the end at the same time as Grace and it was really well done.
Anger and how poisonous it can be if you hold onto it was such a good, well-done theme of this book and I especially liked how it talked about grief. Not to mention all the descriptions of food in this book made me very hungry and I got cooking halfway through.
4.5 stars!