By Bread Alone - Softcover

Sarah-Kate Lynch

Softcover

ISBN 10: 055277104X ISBN 13: 9780552771047

Publisher: Black Swan, 2004

Synopsis

It's not easy being the adoring mother of one, living in an eccentric tower in the middle of the English countryside coping with a short-sighted goat, a grumpy father-in-law and a dysfunctional swarm of bees, but Esme Slack manages it. Or does she? Sometimes the gob-smackingly gorgeous French sourdough bread she insists on making every day is the only thing she truly believes she is getting right. But is that because it tastes so delicious, or because it reminds her of the girl she once was and, more particularly, of Louis, the village boulanger who saved her from a life of being half-baked? All she has left of the Frenchman is the sourdough starter he gave her, made from the fermented juice of an apple planted 190 years before by his great-great-great-grandparents and still going strong in her kitchen cupboard...until she meets him again by chance.

About this title

About the Author

Sarah-Kate Lynch has been a journalist for more than twenty years (she started, she claims, when she was seven) but far prefers making things up to trying hard not to. Her first novel, Blessed Are the Cheesemakers, is published by Black Swan.She hopes one day to say in this bit of the book that she spends her time between her homes in Auckland, Dublin and New York. At this stage, however, she only has one home and that is in Auckland. In Dublin and New York she sponges off her friends like anyone else.

From Publishers Weekly

As the crust of a sourdough boule protects the tenderness within, so it is with artisanal baker Esme Stack, who privately nurses a grieving heart while wittily coping with crises involving her dour father-in-law, Henry; the specter of her beloved, recently deceased Granny Mac; and an evil goat. Esme, her husband, Pog, and their four-year-old, Rory, have left their glam London life and moved to the Suffolk countryside after a tragedy so terrible it is long unnamed. Bread provides much subject matter and metaphor, especially with the reappearance of Esme's first lover, a sexy French artisanal baker. Lynch lets the dough of her story rise slowly, allowing the dread to build even amid the gossipy fun. Nestling a tragedy inside a comedy is a brave feat, and New Zealander Lynch (Blessed Are the Cheesemakers) almost pulls it off. Alas, the plot resolution centers on improbable actions by Charlie Edmonds, Esme's gay male best friend, and Ridgely Watson, the son of Esme's female best friend, who exists offstage until he appears to commit a final, dramatic and deeply unwise act. Lynch then resolves the story in a crescendo of moralizing, weeping and redemption. Like one of the breads Esme bakes, the story stays in the oven a little too long—it's not perfect, but it's still good.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Black Swan
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 055277104X
• ISBN 13: 9780552771047
• Binding: Paperback