Karen Gossett's Book Review:

          "Cover The Butter" by Carrie Kabak

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                   by Carrie Kabak

If you were ever the fly in the ointment, the worm in the bottle with eyes glued to the outside world, the bat in the belfry, the mouse inside the cat squealing to get out, living the mess of a life that is yours, that you made, not without the help of loved and unlovable ones, then have I got a book for you and aren't you going to love it.

First-time-author, Carrie Kabak, has offered up a delicious dish of a new book, Cover The Butter, due in bookstores June 16, from Dutton Press.

The reader walks into main character, Kate Cadogan's kitchen to discover a mess that needs cleaning, and suddenly we embark alongside Kate on a journey back through her life to relive and come to understand measurements of moments and ingredients of relationships so that Kate can adjust the recipe for her future.

Author Kabak brings alive her native Britain with vivid descriptions of Kate's Catholic, 1960's schoolgirl life at 33 Cherry Blossom Road in Dorton and her college girl adventures with best friends from that life, Moira and Ingrid, amidst 70's London. The friends shop for knee-high boots, buzz along the Underground to the beat of Abbey Road, and party in posh Holland Park to the tune of Knights In White Satin.

Kate's path in life is presaged by two candles on her birthday cake that refuse to be extinguished, and predetermined by her mother, Biddy, who is a toxic mixture of coldhearted cruelty and ironfisted control sweetened for consumption with what, confusingly for Kate and the reader, appears to be genuine love and concern.

A strong woman, Biddy, thwarts Kate's attempts at individuality and independence while her weak, but loving father observes and always in the end backs up his wife in her manipulations. Kate's passion for cooking and baking which she would like to follow as a career seems to be lost as Kate suffers the debilitating effects of a rancid mother.

Kate eventually marries Rod, a successful financial advisor, sports nut,and a member of the right clubs, right associations, and right family. Kate at first feels grateful to haved at last landed in an approved-of-by-her-parents, comfortable marriage to a safe man, but soon discovers that there is not always safety in numbers, especially if the numbers alarmingly don't add up.

Kate relishes the role of wife and mother as she builds and tends her house only to find out that no one is home. Kate's married life is a fascinating, if disturbing, look at a culture all its own with odd visits to Cliff House by the sea.

There are many interesting side trips as well, as when Kate traces her heritage in her Irish Grandmother Geraghty's face at Longshank Farm in Cloondray, Eire, and when she escapes to the refuge of her Welsh grandparents, Mamgu and Griff, in lovely Llandafan, South Wales.

Kate's instructive examination of her complicated relationships with her parents, her first loves, and later her husband and son is healing for Kate, and the reader as well since Kate struggles, as we all do, with issues of love, sexuality, freedom, independence, and courage.

Kabak reveals big and small revelations in Cover The Butter with humor and poignancy as she creates unique characters that are still instantly recognizable, original moments that the reader relates to with intensity--it's clarified butter--an essence that is both personal and universal. She makes use of a fresh kind of narrative that instead of going along with the action, is the action, as it involves you in evolving moments.

Cover The Butter represents all that Kate Cadogan is and isn't and all that needs to be done in her life. It proves that it's never too late to ponder, to change direction, to release ourselves into a wild that we ourselves claim and tame. As we stare at the butter dish, whether or not to cover the butter becomes an existential question. The kind of question that Kate answers by following her passion through the "ribbons of lavender" in Provence, France.

Cover The Butter isn't just a summer read although I'd recommend you read it this summer at the beach, in the grass, or on a dock by the lake, but more importantly it's a book to be read by all women in all seasons. This book is the trilling of a bluebird balancing precariously high on a wire at the exact moment before swooping forward and out upon a wide open, white sky--inky words in search of fulfillment and happiness on an enticingly blank page. Cover The Butter is entertainingly informed by life, offered by Carrie Kabak, a new voice in women's fiction.


Book Review by Karen Gossett