The Good Plain Cook - Tapa blanda

Críticas

Wonderfully drawn (Metro 2008-07-03)

Her writing demonstrates an acute awareness of gathering tension... Roberts looks set to be one of the must-read novelists of this summer (Metro 2008-07-02)

Slyly humorous (Sainsbury's 2008-08-01)

Simmering and sensual (Bella 2008-07-15)

Funny, thought-provoking and very readable (The Gloss 2008-07-01)

Roberts judiciously balances Ellen's delicious outré flamboyance with a beautifully observed portrait of her tolerant, bemused cook.Roberts has said it was her intention to "put the below-stairs girl centre stage". She has succeeded admirably (Eithne Farry Daily Mail 2008-07-18)

Delicious... Gorgeously written, full of teasing observations about love, class and cookery (Kate Saunders The Times 2008-07-19)

Vividly drawn and affecting... fine touches of subtlety and humour (Sophie Davies Financial Times 2008-07-19)

Charming (Image Magazine 2008-07-01)

A subtly witty study of class tensions and general human folly... Roberts writes an understated, suggestive prose that achieves maximum comic impact with deceptively slight materials, and the book's brisk dialogue ensures a fast pace in spite of the languid summer setting...One of the novel's greatest strengths is the way in which the surface comedy is underpinned by a darker narrative seam...The Good Plain Cook succeeds so well not least because it manages to keep its eye firmly, to the end, on the social reality it spoofs (Elizabeth Lowry Guardian 2008-07-26)

Reseña del editor

It's summer 1936, and the world is on the cusp of change, but there's little sign of this in rural Sussex. So when local girl Kitty Allen answers an advert looking for 'a good plain cook', she has no idea what she's in for. For starters, her employer is an American called Ellen Steinberg who believes in calling the staff by their first names and sunbathing in the nude. Then there's Ellen's eleven-year-old daughter, Geenie, a bright, unhappy little thing, and Mrs Steinberg's gentleman friend, Mr Crane, who's said to be a poet - even though he doesn't have a beard and doesn't seem to write much poetry either. Rich bohemians imagining themselves as communists, Steinberg and Crane see themselves as champions of 'the people' - not that they know the first thing about how the people actually live.

Kitty is in no place to criticise - after all she claimed to be a good plain cook, despite hardly knowing how to boil an egg. Utterly out of her depth, she is relieved to have the gardener, Arthur, to talk to. Otherwise she'd never last a summer in this madhouse. Ellen Steinberg wants life to run as smoothly as the love story she imagines her lover George Crane to be writing. But as Kitty arrives, the dream is on the edge of falling apart.