A few years ago, the book had been placed on my book club's to-read list, so when trying to figure out what book to read for March, I made up a list of three books for people to vote on, and The Kitchen House was one of them.
It got the most votes!
The story is told from two perspectives. There's Lavinia, a white girl from Ireland who becomes an indentured servant to a white family in Virgnia, and Belle, a black slave working in the white family's kitchen house. Even though they are both in service to the family, because of the difference in their skin colors, you can imagine that they have very different experiences in dealing with the white family.
What did I think? This sort of felt like a Jane Austen novel set in the south and with less humor. The farther you get into the story, the more misunderstandings, miscommunications, and poor timings there are. You just know that somehow things are going to work out in the end, but you have no idea how a happy ending is ever going to happen. Still, you just keep reading to find out what will happen next.
While I liked the book and that the story was told through the eyes of two characters, there were A LOT of characters to keep track of. At times, I guess I thought the action of the story was a little fast and because there were so many characters a part of the action, I had trouble following what was happening.
What did my book club think? Well, all three of them liked it! We had a really good discussion and didn't even need to rely on the reading guide questions in the back of the book to get us going. (But there are reading guide questions if you need them.)
I also followed the author's recipe for molasses cake, something that the characters ate in the book, and brought some molasses cake to book club, and that was good, too!
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