When I found out at the end that this was the first author's novel I was left speechless. What a delight! Every character's voice is distinctive and unique, they are complex and flawed, but over all of them, Covey's voice whenever she just took over in those letters,  completely destroyed me and stood out the most. I could feel without fail all her love, pain and regrets and those were the paragraphs that broke me the most.

The story deals with topics such as immigration, racism, colourism, gambling issues, biphobia, sexual assault, domestic abuse, colonialism (specifically the West Indies-The UK, America and Spain) and its consequences even in the way the characters viewed their oppressors' land as full of opportunities and then became disillusioned and appalled by the bigotry and lies. It also deals with conflicts such as police brutality and abuse, the difficulties both women (just for being women sometimes) and men of colour face in the workfield; as well as how colourism and gender plays a big role in it.

But most of all it's a book about family history, heritage, feeling torn and at a crossroad with your identity (multiculturalism, hybridity, cultural assimilation, etc.), feeling lonely and ashamed by unfair things that happened to you (mostly women), white lies, safety and love. Above all. It's a book about love. A mother's love for her children. Family's love, friends' love, sibling's conflicts and love and romantic affection. Love for yourself, your safety and your life. 

And: What are you willing to sacrifice for x?

I picked Black Cake as my free add-on because it was named one of the Book of the Month Club’s Book of the Year Finalists. All of the other finalists I had either read or did not appeal to me.

 

The book begins with two siblings, Byron and Benny, as they meet together for the first time in years because of their mother’s death. Byron is a successful and famous ocean scientist, who has achieved everything his Caribbean American parents expected of him, yet who struggles with emotional unavailability and interpersonal relationships. Benny is an aspiring café owner who has not spoken to her family in years after they reacted negatively to her dropping out of a prestigious university and coming out as multisexual. They meet together to hear a recording by their mother explaining that her past is not what she has led them to believe, forcing the siblings to reconsider their heritage, relationships, and identities. 

 

Black Cake has a fluid structure: Wilkerson switches between perspectives, modes of storytelling, and time periods in order to tell her intergenerational story. Instead of being confusing or obnoxious, the constant change between perspectives and time frames serve the story well, as they allow Wilkerson to disclose information at a pace that suits the story as well as address the complexities and backstories of multiple characters. I found Byron and Benny to be a little obnoxious and childish at the beginning, but I grew to appreciate their struggles and personalities as I learned more about their backstories. I also really enjoyed learning about their mother’s history, which was full of twists and turns, and which painted a wonderful portrait of a strong, capable—although not perfect—woman and mother. The symbolism of their mother’s Black Cake recipe beautifully tied the story together.

 

Black Cake is divided into four parts, and by the end of the third part, I felt that things were starting to reach their natural concluding point. However, the book still had another part to it (approximately 140 more pages). As I read part four, I started liking Black Cake less and less. In the first three parts, the tragic accidents and serendipitous twists of fate served the narrative but stopped just short of being unbelievable. Unfortunately, Wilkerson overuses such devices in the fourth part, and the book lost all sense of believability for me.

For example, I was rather confused as to why the main characters were so afraid of retaliation from Little Man's family, despite it appearing extremely unlikely to me that such people would a) piece anything together and b) have the desire, decades later, to do something about it. Perhaps it would have been more believable if Wilkerson had showed earlier on an example of his family being excessively vindictive or clever.

Each improbable turn of events was too coincidental, too well-placed—in short, too fictional. 

 

The story seems to lose focus in part four as it tried to include resolutions for all of its characters, and Benny and Byron’s character arcs fall by the wayside. A couple of chapters seem completely superfluous, especially one in which a completely unimportant side character faces police brutality. The incident is only tenuously related to the main story and is never referred to again after that singular chapter. If Black Cake had stopped while it was ahead around the 250-page mark, it would have been a solid 4 or 4.25 rating for me. Its meandering and unbelievability toward the end, however, brings it down to a 3.25 for me.

 

You will probably like Black Cake if: you enjoy multi-generational stories with complex characters, books that celebrate the diversity of its characters, and themes of heritage, family, personal sacrifice, and identity.

 

You might not like Black Cake if you dislike shifting POVs and large casts of characters. Readers who have a hard time suspending their disbelief when it comes to certain narrative coincidences and connections might also find this book frustrating. 

 

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Similarities between these two books include:

·      An epic plot that spans multiple generations of a single family

·      Themes of identity, heritage, belonging

·      A main character who runs away and changes their identity

·      Characters who get caught up in illegal gangster activity

4.5 stars, I knew this was going to be a family drama, but I didn’t know that I was going to cry so much. 

This was a beautiful tale of love, loss, the courage to go on, the courage to continue to always be yourself. 

Fantastic.