I’ve liked the novels I’ve read so far by Veronica Henry, so I added a few to my wishlist, and was given ‘A Family Recipe’ for my birthday earlier in the year. I picked it up to read a couple of days ago, wanting something reasonably light, and found it quite difficult to put down by the time I was half-way through.
The story is set in two different periods, as is not uncommon in modern novels. It opens in April 1942, introducing 18-year-old Jilly Wilson. She’s the only daughter of a doctor and a teacher, and they seem to have been quite liberal parents for the era. We meet Jilly as she is quietly sneaking out of the house after dark, to meet a young man who is about to go off to train as a fighter pilot. They met at a dance, the night before, and had an instant spark of kinship… and this is their last chance to see each other before he leaves.
The inevitable happens in the park, and then the bombing starts. We already know that Jilly lives in Bath, a fairly small town in those days, one which wasn’t really prepared for an air raid. Devastation happens all around her, and she races back home… only to discover that disaster has happened.
The story then moves forward seventy-five years to 2017. This time, Laura is the main character. She’s a mother in her early forties, who is dreading saying goodbye to her younger daughter Willow. Willow is about to start a course at York University, and they’re having a kind of farewell party the night before. Laura loves to cook and bake, and is a natural hostess, even though she’s full of dread at the thought of her nest emptying.
Her dread is is tinged with concern too, because Willow has suffered asthma most of her life, with some very serious attacks that sent her to hospital. She’s been clear for the past eighteen months, with better medication, but Laura worries that she will be careless.
Willow has an older sister, Jasmine, who is responsible, practical and organised. We don’t see much of Jasmine, who must have had a bit of a difficult life with her sister in and out of hospital. But she’s a likeable and thoughtful person - and is also off to university, for the third year of her course.
Laura’s husband Dom has been an excellent father, although recently he has been extremely stressed about a huge building project which is going rather too slowly for his tastes. He has invested a huge amount of money and time, and has taken out a potentially crippling bank loan. He tells Laura everything, but she has taken almost no interest in his work, partly because she has been so caught up with Willow.
So Dom and Laura take their daughter to York, and do what they can to settle her in. But she doesn’t want them to stick around, so they set off for home. They stop for coffee at a service station, and there Laura learns something that shocks her, and turns her entire world upside down…
The writing is good, the pace excellent, and the switch between 1942 and 2017 works well. I had guessed the connecting character before it was revealed; it’s not really a secret, and was clear fairly early in the book. We then see that character and her closest friend in both scenarios - as very young adults, in a terrifying war-torn world, and as 93-year-old women.
I found Laura a bit difficult to relate to - I could entirely understand her worries as a mother, and her dread of the empty nest. But she’s also very driven, and surprisingly astute, which didn’t quite gel with her lack of interest in what her husband was doing. When she receives her terrible shock, she seems to recover much more quickly than I would expect, harbouring a great deal of anger yet somehow channelling it into constructive occupations. And she’s totally unwilling to discuss it.
On the other hand, I very much liked her grandmother, known as Kanga. She brought Laura up when her mother was killed, and is strong and empathic, despite being elderly. She’s extremely generous, too, and supportive without (on the whole) being judgemental. I would like to be like Kanga at that age!
It’s essentially a character-based story, with an emphasis on cooking - several characters are skilled at preserving and baking, and there are a few recipes at the end of the book as well as one in the course of the story. It made an excellent light read, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes this kind of women’s fiction with a dual timeline.
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