The Resistance Bakery by Siobhan Curham
The Resistance Bakery by Siobhan Curham
Paris, 1943. The scent of fresh baguettes hangs in the air as Coralie unbolts the door to her bakery with trembling fingers. She must get out of the city. Hiding her precious leather recipe book inside her coat, she promises never to let the secret locations of the people she worked tirelessly to save fall into German hands…
Present day. Raven is unhappy about being shipped off to the other side of the country for the summer to stay with the mysterious French grandmother she barely knows. And discovering a tattered, leather-bound book with yellowed pages full of handwritten recipes and coded numbers, she is stunned.
Her grandmother has never baked for her. And she refuses to talk about Paris, or the past. Flipping through the book, a faded photograph of a laughing couple falls out. As Raven scans the writing on the back she can scarcely believe her eyes…
What really happened in that tiny French bakery all those years ago? And could this forgotten recipe book finally bring healing to a woman still haunted by wartime secrets? Or has Raven’s discovery shattered any chance of bonding with her grandmother, before her time runs out?
The Resistance Bakery is an unforgettable page-turner about forbidden love and family secrets in World War Two. Fans of The Letter, The Nightingale and Fiona Valpy will be totally hooked.
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| The Resistance Bakery by Siobhan Curham |
My review
The Resistance Bakery is another moving, historical fiction from Siobhan Curham that made me think about the dark days of the Occupation in a different light. Having read several books set during this time, this is the first fiction book I’ve encountered to acknowledge the horrific economic situation the Germans had to endure in the inter-war years, something that undoubtably had a huge part to play in the second world war.
We know from the prologue what Coralie does as she bakes her last patisseries for the Germans occupying the prestigious Lutetia Hotel in Paris. The dual timeline then guides us tantalizingly slowly, through what led her to make such a risky move, as she looks back on her war story with granddaughter Raven, a troubled teenager in 1980’s America. This happens forty years after she fled the hotel kitchen and is the first time she has revealed the horrors she witnessed during the Occupation.
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| The Resistance Bakery by Siobhan Curham |
Coralie and Raven were both free-thinking, outspoken women who were braver than they imagined, and I enjoyed watching the relationship between them develop. As they learned about each other, they were able to break down some of the barriers they had both been hiding behind and ultimately help each other navigate the future.
Food played an important role in this novel and I loved the idea of Coralie folding emotions and feelings into her baking, and how food connected so many of the characters, despite differences of generation or nationality.
I think my favourite character had to be Madame Monteux, Coralie’s benefactor in Paris. She was colourful, positive and almost always full of optimism despite the desperate situation they found themselves living in. The vivid image of her Madame Butterfly Metro performance will stay with me for a long time.
This isn’t just another novel set during the Occupation, Siobhan has once again come up with something refreshingly different, emotional and thought-provoking. There were some things I thought might happen as I was reading, but there were also surprises and twists, that turned out to be the icing on the cake.
As I finished reading, I looked up the Lutetia Hotel online, feeling such a connection to it from this book, and wanting to make sure it really did exist – it does and looks to be just as majestic as it’s described. I’m just not sure I’ll ever be lucky enough to book into a suite there for the night though.
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Siobhan Curham
Author Bio
Siobhan Curham is an award-winning author, ghost writer, editor and writing coach. She has also written for many newspapers, magazines and websites, including The Guardian, Breathe magazine, Cosmopolitan, Writers’ Forum, DatingAdvice.com, and Spirit & Destiny. Siobhan has been a guest on various radio and TV shows, including Woman’s Hour, BBC News, GMTV and BBC Breakfast. And she has spoken at businesses, schools, universities and literary festivals around the world, including the BBC, Hay Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Bath Festival, Ilkley Festival, London Book Fair and Sharjah Reading Festival.
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