This is part of my Summer Reads series where I’ll be sharing book recommendations – a series of “not just cookbooks”.
I initially chose this book because it had larger print and felt like it would be easy for me to read (the second book I read when I came home from the hospital). A few pages in I could barely put it down. Apparently, the new Mardi stays up late reading, pre-surgery Mardi was out like a light at 9 PM every night!
From the publisher:
Born into a basket of clean sheets—ruining a perfectly good load of laundry—Emmeline never quite fit in on her family’s rural Nova Scotian farm. After suffering multiple losses in the First World War, her family became so heavy with grief, toxicity, and mental illness that Emmeline felt their weight smothering her. And so, she fled across the Atlantic and built her life in England. Now she is retired and living in a small coastal town with her best friend, Vera, an excellent conversationalist. Vera is also a small white dog, and so Emmeline is making an effort to talk to more humans. When she joins a memoir-writing course at the library, her classmates don’t know what to make of her. Funny, loud, and with a riveting memoir, she charms the lot. As her past unfolds for her audience, friendships form, a bonus in a rather lonely life. She even shares with them her third-biggest secret: she has liberated hundreds of spoons over her lifetime—from the local library, Cary Grant, Winston Churchill. She is a compulsive spoon stealer.
When Emmeline unexpectedly inherits the farm she grew up on, she knows she needs to leave her new friends and go see the farm and what remains of her family one last time. She arrives like a tornado in their lives, an off-kilter Mary Poppins bossing everyone around and getting quite a lot wrong. But with her generosity and hard-earned wisdom, she gets an awful lot right too. A pinball ricocheting between people, offending and inspiring in equal measure, Emmeline, in her final years, believes that a spoonful—perhaps several spoonfuls—of kindness can set to rights the family so broken by loss and secrecy
The book is epic – spanning Emmeline’s life from the late 1800s until 1969 when she died. Typically I avoid books (and films) that take place in different timelines but this is well-handled and easy to follow. We travel back through time via her memoir that is reading aloud to her writing group in the present day.
Predominant themes running through the book are family, friendship, war, mental health, health, grief, forgiveness, acceptance, and let’s not forget sweet Vera, her companion dog. It might sound like a lot going on but truly this will fill your cup in so many ways. Beautifully written, well-developed characters with enough twists and turns to keep you on your toes, this is an un-putdownable (it’s a word!) must-read for summer – or anytime!
Buy The Spoon Stealer on Amazon (this affiliate link should bring you to the Amazon store in, or closest to, your country).
Please note: This post contains affiliate links. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This means that if you click over and purchase something, I will receive a very small percentage of the purchase price (at no extra cost to you). Thank you in advance!
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Buy my books! In the French kitchen with kids and French Food for Everyone: le goûter (after school snacks), le dîner (dinner) and le petit déjeuner (breakfast) are out now! Click here for details and how to order!
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