Night Baker

I have reviewed this book as part of my activity for the Evart-Gunn Publishing Company Book Salvage Operation,   Read This First

"The Night Baker" is the second novel of the South Carolina native, Toronto transplant writer and critic Eve St. Wello published in 1991 by Kiva's Koroneth Publishing of Willowdale, Ontario, Hardcover, 488 pages, no graphics.

I read and reviewed this volume when cataloguing and creating an inventory of the books found as part of the "The Evart-Gunn Publishing Company Book Salvage Operation" (see first entry of this blog).

This is the very well written story of Glenda H. who just opened a French patisserie and thought that hard work, skills and imagination are (theoretically) sufficient to guarantee success. What Glenda did not expect is the difference between practice and theory to be so much bigger in practice than in theory. Glenda must have everything fantastic, fresh and fragrant, so she bakes all night and takes trips all day. (It takes us long to find out that she was a day tripper, a Sunday driver, yeah!). So when the time came to name the store she narrowed it down to: "The Day Tripper" and "The Night Baker", in the end she went with the latter.

The novel is entertaining and the narrative flows well with beautifully defined characters and clever descriptions. The best part of the writing deals with the recipes and the depiction of the baked wares, but the most exciting and satisfying tales are about Glenda's frequent, very short (and mostly unhappy) trysts.

The novel ends with Glenda opening Wednesday's Toronto Start, the Food Section, to see a picture of her in front of the store with the title "Get Your Kicks at the most excellent Night Baker's".

It takes an astute, canny and discerning reader to adjudge that between "The Day Tripper" and "The Night Baker" Glenda definitely goes with the former.