Well, I'm back from my summer vacation, which now seems like quite the blur. Having set a personal record of reading 17 books in 15 days, I guess I'm not really surprised. Some of them were great pieces of literature (Cormac McCarthy, J. M. Coetzee, & Audrey Niffenegger backlist), some of them were delightful pieces of fluff (a book called Jane Eyre's Daughter, for one example). I also took along a few advance readers copies to get a head start on some later summer/early fall reading. One forthcoming book that I'm looking forward to handselling is called Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin, due out in August from Delacorte Press. This deceptively sweet debut novel set in Rwanda is, much like main character Angel Tungaraza, full of hidden depths. On the surface she bakes cakes for all occasions for a cross-section of people, ranging from the wife of the US ambassador to the "baby mama" of a young man who struggles to make ends meet. Her higher calling as a generous listener, though, showcases a forgiving soul who is always ready to be burdened with other people's dark secrets, and in post-genocide Rwanda, there is no shortage of those. This is a lovingly imagined story of people who have somehow found a way to look past their neighbors' (or their own) misdeeds to find a hopeful future in Kigali. If you love Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, you're sure to enjoy this new novel, too.
~Emily Crowe
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