May 30, 2017
I'm humbled and proud to share the latest 5-Star Review for my Contemporary Women's Fiction novel--a genre you either love as I do--or it's an acquired taste.
Libro Illustrato by Kyra: .libroillustratobykyra
Olly Olly oxen free! Those exact words are in this book. No lie. Review over.
Tabarnak! Tabarnak! Tabarnak! This word is also in this book…often. I cannot wait to see if the “Machine of Freedom Less Speech” aka Amazon picks it up and rejects this review because of my faux pas.
'An Enlightening Quiche' by Eva Pasco is home sweet home. Every chapter opening my vaulted memory bank, some robbed and some placed there intentionally for safe keeping.
The Venus de Milo, Providence Place Mall, Providence Journal, Trinity Rep and Jamestown penguin plunge. All have had a significant contribution to my upbringing or lack thereof.
The story itself is my childhood. I grew up in Beauchemins minus the “bonjour” and insert the “ola”. Beauchemins is a small town where everyone knows that you wore those jeans on Monday and that Susie’s daddy has a small penis due to his running drunk and naked down Main Street on Christmas Eve shouting “get your adverb here”.
Speaking adverbs, adjectives and hard-ons, I mean add-ons, this book has ‘em, by the beaucoup boatful. Case in point, “bells-on-bobtail contractions”. If anyone reading this works in labor and delivery, please mark the chart accordingly. Just once, for me. S’il vous plait.
At first I was lost, I was petrified. Too much flower power for my brain. My brain prefers pull trigger you’re dead sucker. Tabarnak! Knowing this is not a genre I normally enjoy, I grew strong, and I learned how to get along. How? It’s called opening your mind and heart to new experiences and pissing away prejudice. It’s called Canada.
Good things come from Canada. Hockey, maple syrup, Justin Trudeau and the majority population of Beauchemins, a French-Canadian community that brought two very different women two very different experiences, Augusta and Lindsay.
We all have friends like Augusta and Lindsey and we love them both, just as they are. We all have a little of Augusta and Lindsey in us. We’ve all been nailed by the roofer and dumped by the prep school pansy.
Augusta is sassy, spirited and smart. Some might think she’s a tramp but I’d call it planned promiscuity. She knows exactly what she’s doing. All that romping is part of her bigger picture. The next wrung on the ladder of libido. A “get laid over” on her flight to happy land.
Augusta’s walled heart is her weapon of survival. A generationally influenced, brick by brick fortress built to protect her against the constant attack of “the failure cycle”. The expectation of failure passed from generation to generation. Food stamps, high school drop outs, teen pregnancy, cycles that low income Americans battle against every day. Cycles that can only be broken by dangling the carrot of success when that one sibling from the family of eight who earns their college degree, breaking the failure cycle and bringing hope to generations to come. The American Dream.
Lindsay is the American Dream. She was born with the advantage, prerequisites already met and opportunities galore. Including an opportunity which presents itself through a series of unfortunate events, fulfilling her maternal wishes.
Life in Beauchemins packs the drama: cheating spouses, friendships threatened, secrets hidden, an unspeakable crime, a struggling economy and a quiche contest that brings all the missing ingredients to light.
An Enlightening Quiche is a delightful read for those who enjoy women’s fiction written with pun heavy pageantry. Eva Pasco is a tuneful wordsmith. A first-class ink slinger. Every paragraph of An Enlightened Quiche is a novel in itself. Pageantry and drama aside, it’s a story about home and that’s something we can all relate to.
There’s no place like home and Eva Pasco provides the ruby slippers.
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