Go Ask Fannie Farmer

Description

 Though the adult Blair siblings have agreed to keep things calm and amiable on a trip to stay with their elderly father, each arrives, in true Blair style, with a secret agenda. But plans are derailed when Lizzie, the youngest, turns up late with a burnt hand, impending criminal charges, and a damp family cookbook: Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School. The now ruined cookbook is the last vestige of a more idyllic time, when there were four siblings, not three, a public family reputation to uphold, and a mother whose handwritten notes in the margins of the recipes are their last link to her after the accident years ago. But secrets will always out, especially amongst family: and this weekend, the Blair siblings will learn that there is more to their mother's story than they could have anticipated... Told in three parts, roving between then and now, Go Ask Fannie Farmer tells of the life and death of Lillian Blair, the over-bearing, bickering, but loving children who look for ways to connect with one another in her absence, and the inner lives we hide from our families.

Review: A remarkably lucid and authoritative novelist -- John Irving