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Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
- Ballantine Books, 2022
- Hardcover, 385 pages
- ISBN 978-0-593-35833-7
Maybe, when all this was over, Mr. Mitch could ask Byron about his latest project, about how the institute he works for is helping to map the seafloor. The oceans are a challenge, Mr. Mitch thinks. And what about a person’s life? How do you make a map of that? The borders people draw between themselves. The scars left along the ground of one’s heart. (p. 20)
Eleanor Bennett has died and left behind with her lawyer, Charles Mitch, a series of recordings for her son, Byron, and his younger sister, Benny (short for Benedetta) to listen to. Eleanor insisted that they listen to the recordings together, and the accompanying note is directed to B and B, a term she has used throughout their lives to address them collectively. She had hoped to tell them about her life in person, but Benny has been estranged from the family for 8 years and all of Eleanor’s voicemail pleas could not bring her back home in time.
Along with the recordings, the note continues, Eleanor has left one of her famous black cakes in the freezer for them. “I want you to sit down together and share the cake when the time is right. You’ll know when” (p. 15), she tells them. The black cake and its significance becomes the backbone of the story Eleanor has to tell. This emotionally charged, complex book is so well written that it’s hard to believe it’s Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel. The characters are finely developed, and each scene moves the story along. The dialogue and pacing are perfect, and the writing style, with its repeated images (the ocean, the cake, the measuring cup) throughout, emphasizes the story’s significance.
The novel unfolds with a dual timeline: 2018, the present, when B and B are listening and reacting to the recordings; and Eleanor’s story of her life experiences, beginning on a Caribbean island and including her own parents’ lives as well. The use of more than one timeline can be tricky, but Wilkerson handles it well. Sections are well demarcated, and after each section of Eleanor’s story we return to the present and see how Byron and Benny react to their mother’s revelations.
One revelation is a bombshell:
You two have a sister. If I don’t tell you the truth now, before I go, the three of you will be lost to each other forever. I spent so much of my life keeping this from you, but I owe this to you. I owe it to you to let you know about my past because this is your story, too. (p. 137)
[I have a firm no-spoilers policy, but I’m cutting myself some slack here because B and B first learn of their sister’s existence on page 31, which I consider fairly near the beginning of the book.]
How Byron and Benny react to their mother’s story is crucial to the novel’s meaning because, as Eleanor says, it’s their story, too. Their new realizations affect their own sense of identity as well as lend depth to their understanding of who their parents were and how they became the people B and B grew up with. Another suggestion of this passage is the power of secrets, especially family secrets and their effects that are passed from one generation to the next. Both of these are aspects of Life Stories in Literature.
Someone once told the young Eleanor “Everything is connected to everything else, if you only go far enough back in time” (p. 153). The rich and deeply rewarding Black Cake portrays the need for connection driven by the human desire to be known, understood, and accepted.
Here’s a related article: Culinary Fusion in the Ancient World.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
- Harper, 2023
- Kindle ed.
- ISBN 978-0-063-32752-8
I almost didn’t pay attention to this novel because the title made me think it was yet another book about a male character, like David Copperfield. (David Copperfield is a fine novel; I’ve just been trying to read novels about characters other than white males lately.) But when I came across a review that opened with the statement “Tom Lake is a place, not a person” and read the description, I immediately realized that this is a Life Stories in Literature novel, a life review novel.
The novel is set at a cherry orchard in northern Michigan during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. The protagonist is Lara, who, along with her husband, runs the orchard. They have three daughters, all in their 20s, who have come home to their parents’ house for the lockdown. Because there are no migrant workers available, the family has to harvest the entire crop of one cherry variety (the most productive and therefore the main source of income) during a short window of peak ripeness.
Lara, an actor before she got married, had a brief romance with the famous and handsome Peter Duke. To help pass the cherry-picking time, Lara’s daughters beg her to tell them about her life: “My girls have directed me to start the story at the beginning when they have no interest in the beginning. They want to hear the parts they want to hear with the rest cut out to save time.” [Because I read the Kindle edition, I can’t cite page numbers for quotations.] She does go back to the beginning to tell how she got into acting in the first place, even though she knows that’s not what the girls want to hear about, because we, the readers, need to know about it.
Cherries have to be carefully picked by hand, which gives Lara plenty of story time and the girls lots of reflection time to think about their own lives and their relationship with their parents, especially their mother.
What I particularly liked about Lara’s approach to telling her story is the way she takes control of it. Like Eleanor Bennett in Black Cake, Lara has a secret in her past: “There was always going to be a part of the story I didn’t tell [my husband] or the girls. What I did was mine alone to do. I tore the page from the calendar and threw it away.” But unlike Eleanor, Lara’s secret has no consequences that affect her children’s lives.
Much like Lillian Boxfish, who takes a walk through New York City while reminiscing about her life, Lara acknowledges (to herself) both her past and her present life. And, also like Lillian Boxfish, Lara’s life review brings her a sense of having lived a life of love and happiness and having made choices that were ultimately right for her.
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
