The Kitchen Front

December 7, 2020
Ryan’s wonderful latest takes her back to the British WWII homefront she chronicled in The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir. This time through, the spotlight is on women making due under the restrictions of food rationing. Ryan structures the novel around a cooking competition in 1942, with the prize being a cohosting position on a food-themed radio program. Four contestants from a small town 15 miles south of London become unexpected friends as they compete for the prize: frazzled war widow Audrey Landon, her social-climber sister, Gwendoline; orphaned kitchen maid Nell Brown; and secretly pregnant chef Zelda Dupont. While the men of the novel tend to be one-dimensional villains or saints, the main characters grow in surprising but believable ways as they find ways to help each other after competing. A master of plotting and working in different registers, Ryan weaves in a romance for Nell and a subplot involving Gwendoline’s abusive husband while keeping the cooking competition front and center, complete with tempting recipes. Readers with an appetite for homefront WWII novels will find this deeply satisfying. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners.

Narrator Jasmine Blackborow captivatingly re-creates England during WWII, focusing on its hardworking women and a BBC-sponsored contest to use the limited ingredients of food rations to prepare tasty, healthy dishes. Listeners will experience life in tiny Finley, including occasional air raids, and meet evacuees from other places and four women who are determined to win the competition. Blackborow's delightfully diverse ladies include Audrey Langdon, a war widow with three children; her estranged upper-class sister, Lady Strickland; young, insecure housemaid and fabulous cook Nell Brown, and Zelda DuPont, a successful London chef who's billeted with Langdon. Most memorable is elderly cook Mrs. Quince, who dispenses wisdom and kindness. Lively accents, blooming romance, and people coping with difficulties make for a worthwhile and poignant listen. S.G.B. � AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine