she flew the coop

I really wish that i could call this book a good chick lit book without the awful connotations that go with it! It should probably be called middle aged chick lit, but that sounds so insulting. This isn't a book just for middle aged women although its mainly about them.

It does have a kinda happy ending like those sort of trashy novels do but in a completely different way. You leave this novel feeling like you've chewed on something quite substantial, kind of like some of the food described in the book.

The book starts with 16 year old Olive Nepper drinking poison and going into a coma because shes pregnant with the local preachers baby, which in the 1950s we all know to be a bad thing.
The story then progresses and we meet other residents of this small southern town Limoges in Louisiana and get to know them and their troubles.

This book is dark in plot yet michael lee west uses a light touch in the telling of the story.
This is definitely a book to make you laugh and then cry, sometimes all in the same chapter. Throughout the book are many delectable descriptions of food and recipes, and these arnt just added in as pretty extras.
Whilst the society around them is outwardly controlled by men in the forms of both the church and husbands, in their own domestic spheres these women are god and get out alot of their frustrations and emotions out in what they cook.
The most obvious and heartbreaking example of this are "Sophie's beaten biscuits" a meal that she starts to cook for herself when she thinks her violent husbands out for the night.
I personally loved this aspect of the book but i have a feeling that if you don't think about food all the time like i do that you may find the constant food chatter irritating.
One thing that i did find unsatisfactory about this book for me was the ending, two of the women ended up conveniently widowed which made it feel a bit moralistic in a everyone gets their just desserts way.
Considering the era in which the book is set it kinda made sense since one of the husbands would have been able to run of with he's wife's inheritance.
But i feel that if your going to go down the moralistic route that you should go whole hog. For one man to get killed off for having an affair but letting the preacher who got a sixteen year old pregnant and then grooms and seduces a thirteen year old which results in her walking home bleeding severely only getting tarred and feathered before hes made to leave town seems out of proportion to me.
I know life doesn't work that way but if you take the route of righteousness in a book i want full payback!
Saying all of that though i did really enjoy this book, West is very witty and funny. One of my favourite lines from the book was "A hard dick has no conscience" which made me laugh out loud so much that my partner insisted on knowing what was so funny and then being thoroughly unamused.

I would recommend this book, but i would also warn them that there is alot of sex in this book and not all of it is nice. Overall its quite feelgood in character and would make you feel better if your having a crap time with men, yet in not too twee a way.

In my next post I'll give you the details for the southern feast i devised.