Black Cake: The compelling and beautifully written New York Times bestseller

It was an interesting read, not what I expected. It covered the two siblings, their relationships with each other and their parents. The black cake had a cultural significance but it was the emotional connection that linked the 'black cake' throughout the novel.

The Macclesfield Library Book Group have just finished reading 'Black Cake'. We received free books from the Reading Agency in return for our reviews:

'Enjoyed the book and all the characters. Was glad we out in the end what happened to all the characters. Also enjoyed that the chapters were short and spread out over time'

'The story was excellent and the theme of 'black cake' running through was very compelling.'

'I really enjoyed this story, though found the back and forth of the story in time a bit annoying and hard to keep up with. My favourite characters were Benny and Byron!'

'I enjoyed the strong characters and the balance of humour and drama'

'Lovely story but I personally felt a bit jumbled up in its timeline!'

'Really enjoyed this book and how it all pieced together. The characters are interesting and compelling and you want to know more about them and see where they end up. I would have liked more on the characters backstories and decisions.'

This novel is a real emotional rollercoaster.The characters deal with adversity constantly but manage to rise from it, rebuild their lives and move on. The short chapters I found to be cleverly written because it spanned different generations and kept the characters very much in my thoughts.
A thoroughly enjoyable read.

From the beginning of this book, I was completely baffled as to which characters were who and where they fitted in. For an improvement, the narrative would have benefitted by having a family tree at the beginning.

The theme is centred around Afro Caribbean characters who are mostly related to each other (shades of Andrea Levy's Small Island) Black Cake is well written. In a nutshell, Eleanor's estranged children reunite for. her funeral in California and learn of their strange inheritance. A voice recording from their mother narrates the tumultuous story of a woman who escapes from her family home on suspicion of murder. Can her children put the past behind them after looking into their mother's revelations? I think that this is a wonderful debut novel which suffers from the introduction of too many characters which seem to just pop out of the nowhere. It required a lot of concentration. Throughout the novel, we are reminded of the local foods of the Caribbean (eg. "Black cake) as well as the traditions that go into the preparation of same.
Fascinating stuff which is rather reminiscent of a wedding or Christmas cake. A rich and complex novel which, in my opinion it could have done with some ruthless editing. I think Charmaine was trying to keep our interest by describing events in too much detail.

A very engaging easy read. Black Cake starts with Eleanor Bennett’s death and an audio legacy she made at the end of her life as a legacy to her two children. I was hooked from the beginning and couldn't put it down. Would definitely recommend.

This book had me gripped from the beginning and I found it very hard to put down as the book was so engaging, everything about this book was well written.
Each characters history, the way Bennie and Byron and later on Charles Mitch each react to the late Eleanors request, the way the author discribed the island and the sea where Covey grew up, the relationships she formed and always carried with her either in fear or in love and her sudden dramatic change of life to a cold bleak Britain are all very believable.
Overall just a fantastic read.

This debut novel opens with a non-paragraph prologue called "Then/1965." A man stands at the water's edge "waiting for his daughter's body to wash ashore." The next page is titled "Now/2018" and we meet Byron and Benny, estranged siblings seeing each other for the first time in eight years at their mother's funeral.
The chapters come fast and furious after that. It takes some getting used to at first, but you eventually settle into a rhythm and enjoy puzzling out what happens between each short snippet. It's 382 pages of flash fiction to fill in those 53 years between Then and Now.
It all adds up to quite a story. Every character has multiple narratives. There's the face they present to their fellow characters. Then there's their true backstory which often flips that public face on its head. Or as Benny wonders in her own head as she grapples with her parents' history: "This is who they have always been, an African American family of Caribbean origin, a clan of untold stsories and half-charted cultures."
"Black Cake" Is plot driven mostly by the internal dialogue and flashbacks. It is sometimes confusing initially, but ultimatelyrewarding when the whole story coalesces by the end. There's much more to recommend here including weighty themes about race, identity and protecting the environment as well as the power of family recipes to convey love without words.
I would recommend this to anyone and look forward to more to come from this new novelist.

Black Cake is a family saga which starts with Eleanor Bennett’s death. Her legacy to her two children, Byron and Benny, is an audio recording which she made at the end of her life and which reveals a tumultuous past about which they were completely unaware. She requests that they listen to it together in the presence of the family solicitor, a request which is, in itself, problematic as the two siblings are very different and have been estranged for many years. Byron is a successful oceanographer and a media darling. Benny on the other hand, is of an artistic temperament and has been drifting through life, unsure in which direction she is going. Eleanor’s recording forms part of the narrative, interspersed with strands of storyline from Byron, Benny and various other characters who featured in Eleanor’s life. And she really did have quite a life – heartbreak, secrecy, murder and loss all play a part. This story spans decades, continents and cultures.

On the whole this was a very enjoyable book with an interesting, if occasionally confusing, storyline. There is a complex, multi-stranded plot which has been well-constructed and makes for a gripping read. We gradually find out who Eleanor really is and discover the trials and tribulations that she has had to deal with during her life and the sacrifices that she has had to make. Eleanor’s story is absolutely fascinating and I was captivated. The writing is generally excellent and the characters have been well developed and come alive on the page.

However, the start of the book was a problem for me. This was largely because of the style of writing that the author adopted. In an attempt to create intrigue, the author deliberately withholds information from the reader. As an example, for no apparent reason a new character will suddenly be introduced, complete with their own storyline but who seems to have no part to play in the narrative. Instead of creating mystery and suspense, I found this just caused confusion and was very irritating. Whilst the method can work very well, the implementation needs to be seamless and in this particular instance I thought the execution felt a little clumsy and artificial. In actual fact I very nearly gave up but am very glad that I didn’t.
Another confusing aspect was that the characters all move around the globe in the manner of Alan Whicker. The Caribbean, the UK, the US and Italy all feature quite prominently. Whilst I am sure that this is intended to garner a wider readership and is, to some extent, necessary to the plot, I found it quite difficult to orient myself geographically at times and to work out which country I was currently inhabiting.
It does require concentration in order to keep track of the quite complex storyline.

This is a very impressive debut novel and I look forward to reading more by this author. Despite having highlighted a couple of issues, I would wholeheartedly recommend it – if I could give it 4.5 stars, I would.

I simply loved this book! A twisty ride of adventures spanning several generations and continents, this book was evocative and moving, and a joy to read. A masterful debut.

This book slowly won me over, to the extent it raised a tear or two despite that my cynical old self normally resists tugging on heartstrings. It's not perfect, as though the author pours a lifetime of thoughts and ideas into a single narrative that almost sinks under the weight of so much that's crammed in to the story and characters. But Wilkerson's heart is in the right place and this makes up for any stylistic weaknesses. The short chapters, multiple povs and time switches are a bit confusing until you get the hang of who everyone is and how they fit in to the story. There are unlikely coincidences but if you've read Dickens, well, let's say no more.

This is a timely book, reflected in the fact it has been taken up by Oprah Winfrey and is soon to be a TV series. We are finally addressing issues too long ignored by history as taught in our British schools, the tainted legacy of Empire and colonialism. We are enriched by openness to different narratives, a more inclusive history and culture, that ultimately speak to us all as human beings who live, love and die, not so very different in our experiences, hopes, dreams, fears. We read fiction to expand our horizons, to walk in others' shoes, and 'Black Cake' fills that role, rooted in Caribbean history, the legacy of slavery, emigration and the Windrush generation's experiences in the UK that continues with our govt's 'hostile environment' policy for immigrants and refugees. Who gets to write history? The winners, it used to be. Slowly this is changing. Fiction too now reflects our diverse societies, and this has to be a good thing. I look forward to Wilkerson's next book.

As a keen open water swimmer I identified with Covey and Etta's deep love for the sea, the part it plays in their story and who they are, as well as being good role models in a sport in need of greater diversity.

I read this quickly and found it thoroughly engaging. It uses a number of storylines and character perspectives, helping you piece together the jigsaw of the life of Covey. She is born and raised on a Caribbean island, abandoned by her mother, and when her father tries to pressurise her into a marriage she doesn’t want, circumstances force her to leave her homeland. The rest of her life is spent in Britain (briefly) and California, and she was never able to go back to the island. Her recipe for Black Cake is one of the only things she has to connect her to her heritage, and the cake and its rituals and meaning are a thread running through the book. Her life has been full of secrets, and they are revealed and explained to us through the telling of a recording she has made to be played to 2 of her children upon her death. We hear their stories too, how they start to understand how they became the people they did, as they finally learn about their parents’ lives and secrets, and one particular regret and heartache of Covey’s. There are big themes of heritage, identity and loss in this impressive debut novel. I read that is has been bought or optioned by Oprah – I can imagine it on-screen and would not be surprised if it became a best-seller.

24 January 2022
09:15

The one thing I don't like about the novel is the title. While the cake is deeply significant once you're well into the story, the title confused me enough that I nearly didn't pick it up in the first place. The use of the word "black" suggested the story would be about people of colour, which it was, but then the blackness of the cake has nothing to do with skin colour at all. Then, throughout the novel, the black cakes pops up over and over again, as if the author is worried we might have forgotten it. While I really liked the way the cake tied the storylines together, the constant references throughout the book made it lose all subtlety, so that by the time we reached the end I just felt, "well, thank goodness the cake actually meant something important," rather than being impressed by the metaphor.

That rant aside, I really enjoyed this novel. I loved the blend of past and present. I loved the variety of the storylines. I loved the characters. I love how the novel is so focussed on a single family, yet covers so much. I love how it tackles huge themes of racism and family and immigration and belonging, yet it never seems to overreach or generalise with preachy statements. As a white person, there was loads here for me to listen to about the black experience, but also so much that I could identify with in its discussion of family and building yourself a home.

I think that my frustration about the over-use of the black cake in the story is primarily because, for the rest, the novel was beautifully written and nuanced. The short scenes reminded me of The Vanishing Half, and the characterisation here is just as astute. The storytelling is slightly more distanced and almost mythic, though, which actually made it feel more lasting. The characters were larger-than-life and yet still believable, and the plot was shocking in places, but in the way that real life so often is.

Overall, I'd recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys character-driven stories examining questions of identify and family, particularly if you're looking to diversify your reading.

A book that started with promise and pace and held my interest for the first half. The first chapter hooks the reader in with hints of a tragedy at sea and a devastating family event. The details of life on a Caribbean island in the 1960s were interesting and the family well portrayed with the building of events to the dramatic wedding scenes gripping. I was surprised at the author’s decision to use very limited patois in the conversations between characters on the island which I felt detracted from the feeling of authenticity although this was explained as Lin not wishing his daughter to speak like that. This was interesting in comparison with having recently read Ingrid Persaud’s Love after Love set in Trinidad.

The mystery of what happened to Covey, her mother, and those connected to them is gradually revealed through the audio recording and we piece together hints, clues and connections.

The themes of family secrets, inter- generational links and the impact of one’s childhood and heritage could have been fascinating but the narrative style of short 1-3 page chapters, lack of direct speech or dialogue and the emphasis on recount and reportage distance the reader from the events and emotions. At times the disjointed storytelling interrupts the narrative flow and we are only able to keep track by following the chapter headings. The confusion of time periods, switching between multiple points of view, voices and characters didn’t help nor did the continual dominance of the author’s viewpoint rather than actually demonstrating events that we can “experience” with the characters at the time.
We had chapters from the point of view of Covey, Byron, Benny, Bunny, Marble, Wanda, Lin and the author. The revelations on the audio recording seemed very strung out over days - presumably to increase dramatic tension.

Some of the coincidences, revelations and events seemed implausible to the point of unbelievability particularly Covey assuming her friend’s identity , their sudden decisions to travel to Edinburgh, and her meeting up again with Gibbs. The suggestion that family members recognised Marble on the TV as one of their family was at the very least straining credibility. Events are skipped over and not fully explored in any depth or detail. Would Marble, to all intents and purposes a British white woman living in Italy, suddenly accept her Black heritage so easily? This is not explored in any depth.

Wilkerson is no Andrea Levy, although she does mention in the afterword having read her brilliant Small Island when doing research on the Caribbean Windrush generation’s experiences of life in the U.K. in the 1960s. Sadly she really didn’t seem able to bring those experiences to life or give them veracity, authenticity or real depth and understanding.

The inclusion of several social issues - adoption, bi-sexuality, violence against women, racism, gender and race stereotyping, employment discrimination, pollution, seems something of a tick box exercise.

I see the book has been optioned by Oprah for a film/TV series - at times it felt like the treatment for such rather than a complex novel.

Thank you to The Reading Agency and publishers for gifting copies of the book to our Hythe based Book Group. Will be interesting to see the responses of other members. We are planning to enjoy a sample of black cake baked by one of our members at the meeting to discuss the book. Hopefully it will have more depth and flavour than the book.