Book-It '22! Book #7: "Midnight at the Blackbird Café" by Heather Webber
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The all new 50 Books Challenge!
Title: Midnight at the Blackbird Café by Heather Webber
Details: Copyright 2019, Forge Books
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Under midnight skies,
Blackbirds sing,
Loving notes,
Baked into pies
Anna Kate Callow has returned to the charming little town of Wicklow, Alabama, to settle her beloved grandmother's affairs, which means closing Granny Zee's cherished restaurant, the Blackbird Café.
To her surprise, Anna Kate finds herself inexplicably drawn to the quirky Southern town her mother ran away from so many years ago, and to the mysterious blackbird pies that some people insist contain a little magic.
Anna Kate isn't the only one coming home. Young widow Natalie Linden Walker has moved back to Wicklow with her adorable daughter, trying to pick up the pieces under the sharp gaze of her overbearing mother.
In order to heal their broken wings and fly, Anna Kate and Natalie must figure out how to let go of their pasts. But family secrets slowly surface, painful truths threatening to keep them grounded forever. Midnight at the Blackbird Café is a charming novel of healing, family, and second chances that sparkles with just the right touch of magic."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I genuinely love magical realism. I've loved it since I was a kid.
Something I've noticed with magical realism? A lot of magical realism books go into detail about food, presumably because the books are heavy on the senses, and food is taste. Whether it's Chocolat by Joanne Harris, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, In the Land of Winter by Richard Grant, Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, or any of Franchesca Lia Block's books, where there's magical realism, there's also going to be food.
How I Liked It: You are invited to a party! You show up, but the place is only about half decorated. The decorations, what there are of them, are gorgeous though! The table is set with food, but only a dish or two. But what little you eat is delicious! You can occasionally hear snatches of music, but what you do hear sounds great! People start turning up but you can't seem to really talk with any of them, but you get the distinct impression that if you just spent more time with them, in a different circumstance, you'd be having a blast. The party ends a bit abruptly and you realize you've been trying to have a good time probably harder than you should have been.
While in the current version of this challenge, I've run across books that started out strong and petered out, in the challenge's previous incarnation, I frequently stumbled across books that would've been so much better, if only they'd had a few tweaks. I'm not talking about a book that's a great idea but is a tire fire in actual execution, I'm talking a few tweaks. This book is none of those and is exactly like that party I described. But how? You'll see once I've finished.
But before you do, meet the small Southern town of Warwick, Alabama. It's currently undergoing a big deal with blackbirds and is overrun with tourists and birders, and people are being interviewed about the phenomena by the press, which is the framing device, of sorts, of the novel.
Meet Anna Kate Callow, twenty-four and visiting Warwick after her beloved maternal grandmother Zee's recent death. Anna Kate is on her way to medical school in Boston where she lives, but has to tie up loose ends with her grandmother's estate, including her cafe. This gets particularly thorny given Anna Kate's parents. Her mother, Zee's daughter Eden, died a few years prior, and her father, AJ Lindon, died in a car accident (with her pregnant mother at the wheel) before Anna Kate was born. Anna Kate has never met her father's family, as they (particularly her paternal grandmother, Seelie) blamed Eden for his death, and so Eden made sure neither she nor her daughter ever set foot in Warwick again (and although Anna Kate was close to Zee, people in town are shocked to learn Zee even had a granddaughter). The feud in town between the two families ensures that her father's family would never set foot in her maternal grandmother's cafe.
Meet Natalie Lindon Walker! Twenty-eight-years-old with a toddler daughter named Olivia Jane (who she calls Ollie), her husband died leaving her with gambling debts and a panic disorder and she has to go back to her parents, particularly the mother who brought her up under the shadow of her much-older brother AJ's death. Natalie needs a job, though, and stumbles across her long-lost niece Anna Kate, for whom she ends up working at the cafe.
Both women struggle with their pasts and how they're affecting the present, and how for each of them their time in Warwick proves transformative, not least because Zee's grandmother was one in a long line of women who baked magic pies containing messages from the dead to the living, a tradition Anna Kate apparently shares. Eventually both women and by extension their families and friends make peace and understanding and both heal the wounds of the past and set forth on a better future.
My first fear was that this was another The Night the Lights Went Out, full of self-consciously "southern" stereotypes, and given some of the themes of the book (family secrets, long-held grudges), it pointed that way.
But it's thankfully not, at least not to the cartoonish extent of that book. Remember that party I mentioned at the beginning? The book is filled with brief teases of storylines that are fascinating and engaging: a mysterious deadly accident, another mysterious deadly accident, long-lost family, magical pies and blackbirds, a family of seers and magic-makers or at least keepers of magic (the term witch is never used), taking a chance on love again, recovery, and much more.
We also have many diverse and distinct characters, many of them quite enjoyable, and their stories are engaging and easy for a reader to want to invest in and follow to their conclusions.
But sadly, all we get are teases. We don't get enough substantial content for there really to be anything more than that. Many characters show significant growth (and, unfortunately, several storylines just peter out) but their breakthroughs don't have the emotional heft they should if we were allowed to explore their stories more. I've spoken about maximalism and its dangers in storytelling, but honestly, there were too many exchanges in this book for which I'd sworn I'd missed a page or a conversation (I hadn't, I checked) because that's how out of the loop they feel.
I suspect part of the problem is the author is trying to do too much with too wide a cast, and she's not Lianne Moriarty, so it just comes across as pretty unfinished.
And it's a shame because this book is so close to casting such a beautiful, blackbird-filled spell of transformation and growth. But ultimately, just too much character development and plot is missing for it to be anything more than a whiff of the rich tale it could've been.
Sometimes the most disappointing parties aren't the ones that out and out stunk, but the ones that could've just been better.
Notable:
A floppy beige bucket hat shaded his eyes as he said, "Good morning, ma'am."
Ma'am. I'd been called ma'am at least two dozen times in the past week, and despite learning the term was a southern courtesy used on any woman, it still set my teeth on edge. Unless you were geriatric, no one used "ma'am" up north. (pg 15)
This has definitely not been my experience. The character's strange aversion to "ma'am" is attributed mostly to her northern upbringing but it just seems, well, strange.
____________________________________________________________________________
"Doc mentioned that you were on all kinds of committees and organizations down in Montgomery."
I had been. Everything from the historical society and the Daughters of the Confederacy to the Junior League and church ministries. I'd dropped a lot of it when I finally got pregnant-- something that had taken a good four and a half years of trying--- and I always wished now that I hadn't cut myself off so completely. (pg 26)
Yikes. Just casually dropping Daughters of the Confederacy. Is that common for Alabama? Probably! Thus the yikes.
__________________________________________________________________________
Mama never used Ollie's nickname, claiming it a ridiculous name for a girl, and that people were going to think she was a boy.
As if that were possible with her long hair, bow lips, arched eyebrows, and button nose. Not to mention the skorts she wore, the pink lace-trimmed shirt with her monogram on the pocket, and matching pink sandals. (pg 31)
Just a reminder that Ollie (full name: Olivia Jane) is a literally a toddler. I guess creepy issues with gender run in their family.
__________________________________________________________________________
Jenna's smile was bright against her dark skin as she glanced over at me. (pg 40)
I couldn't tell if this is an awkward way of saying that Jenna is Black or just a slightly strange comment about the hue of her skin.
_________________________________________________________________________
"Yes, I do know. I loved my son so much that I wanted what was best for him. Parents want what's best for our children, and if that comes across as harsh sometimes, then so be it. Eden was opinionated and headstrong and came from questionable bloodlines-- between Zee's hippie ways and a practically anonymous father... Eden didn't fit in our world. She wouldn't have been happy," Seelie said. "There are expectations that come with being a Linden. Could you imagine Eden at a Junior League meeting?" (pg 200)
I guess it's not a surprise that her daughter casually mentions Daughters of the Confederacy if her mother uses the phrase "questionable bloodlines", yikes.
________________________________________________________________________
"What's today's special?"
[...]
"Sausage and ramps mini-frittatas."
"Ramps? How very southern of you."
"Not true. I simply discovered some growing at the back of Zee's garden and thought I'd try them."(pg 207)
I raised an eyebrow at this since I had only been familiar with ramps in northern climates, but apparently they are popular in Appalachia.
__________________________________________________________________________
"Where did you two live before here?" Though they were two of the kindest, gentlest souls I'd ever come across, they weren't very forthcoming with information about themselves.
"Here, there, and everywhere," Bow said. "We're gypsies at heart." (pg 252)
Would a Alabaman over the age of forty in 2019 (I assume: there's no mention I could see of cell phones or the internet-- or even television, for that matter) use that term? Probably. Is it still a racial slur you shouldn't use and in this case "wanderer" or "nomad" would work just as well? Absolutely.
__________________________________________________________________________
Once upon a time there was a family of Celtic women with healing hands and giving hearts, who knew the value of the earth and used its abundance to heal, to soothe, to comfort. (pg 289)
Some mention is made of Anna Kate's "roots" by her grandmother to her mother, and the fact Anna Kate's grandmother Zee was the one to act as a guardian to the berry trees populated by blackbirds, including a quasi mystical pie ingredient. This passage is given as a sort of backstory of Anna Kate's roots. So would that make them "Wise Women"? From the description, yes. Given the themes of ostracism in the book, I'm kind of surprised that "witchcraft" (or accusations thereof) don't come up, but honestly the book isn't doing enough with what it has as it is, so it's fine.
________________________________________________________________________
Midnight at the Blackbird Café is her first work of women's fiction.
From the "about the author" blurb. I probably really don't want to go into what is classified as "women's fiction" and what isn't, but I do know the term makes me twitchy.
Final Grade: B-
DON'T FORGET I'M ON BLOGSPOT NOW!
The all new 50 Books Challenge!
Title: Midnight at the Blackbird Café by Heather Webber
Details: Copyright 2019, Forge Books
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Under midnight skies,
Blackbirds sing,
Loving notes,
Baked into pies
Anna Kate Callow has returned to the charming little town of Wicklow, Alabama, to settle her beloved grandmother's affairs, which means closing Granny Zee's cherished restaurant, the Blackbird Café.
To her surprise, Anna Kate finds herself inexplicably drawn to the quirky Southern town her mother ran away from so many years ago, and to the mysterious blackbird pies that some people insist contain a little magic.
Anna Kate isn't the only one coming home. Young widow Natalie Linden Walker has moved back to Wicklow with her adorable daughter, trying to pick up the pieces under the sharp gaze of her overbearing mother.
In order to heal their broken wings and fly, Anna Kate and Natalie must figure out how to let go of their pasts. But family secrets slowly surface, painful truths threatening to keep them grounded forever. Midnight at the Blackbird Café is a charming novel of healing, family, and second chances that sparkles with just the right touch of magic."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I genuinely love magical realism. I've loved it since I was a kid.
Something I've noticed with magical realism? A lot of magical realism books go into detail about food, presumably because the books are heavy on the senses, and food is taste. Whether it's Chocolat by Joanne Harris, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, In the Land of Winter by Richard Grant, Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, or any of Franchesca Lia Block's books, where there's magical realism, there's also going to be food.
How I Liked It: You are invited to a party! You show up, but the place is only about half decorated. The decorations, what there are of them, are gorgeous though! The table is set with food, but only a dish or two. But what little you eat is delicious! You can occasionally hear snatches of music, but what you do hear sounds great! People start turning up but you can't seem to really talk with any of them, but you get the distinct impression that if you just spent more time with them, in a different circumstance, you'd be having a blast. The party ends a bit abruptly and you realize you've been trying to have a good time probably harder than you should have been.
While in the current version of this challenge, I've run across books that started out strong and petered out, in the challenge's previous incarnation, I frequently stumbled across books that would've been so much better, if only they'd had a few tweaks. I'm not talking about a book that's a great idea but is a tire fire in actual execution, I'm talking a few tweaks. This book is none of those and is exactly like that party I described. But how? You'll see once I've finished.
But before you do, meet the small Southern town of Warwick, Alabama. It's currently undergoing a big deal with blackbirds and is overrun with tourists and birders, and people are being interviewed about the phenomena by the press, which is the framing device, of sorts, of the novel.
Meet Anna Kate Callow, twenty-four and visiting Warwick after her beloved maternal grandmother Zee's recent death. Anna Kate is on her way to medical school in Boston where she lives, but has to tie up loose ends with her grandmother's estate, including her cafe. This gets particularly thorny given Anna Kate's parents. Her mother, Zee's daughter Eden, died a few years prior, and her father, AJ Lindon, died in a car accident (with her pregnant mother at the wheel) before Anna Kate was born. Anna Kate has never met her father's family, as they (particularly her paternal grandmother, Seelie) blamed Eden for his death, and so Eden made sure neither she nor her daughter ever set foot in Warwick again (and although Anna Kate was close to Zee, people in town are shocked to learn Zee even had a granddaughter). The feud in town between the two families ensures that her father's family would never set foot in her maternal grandmother's cafe.
Meet Natalie Lindon Walker! Twenty-eight-years-old with a toddler daughter named Olivia Jane (who she calls Ollie), her husband died leaving her with gambling debts and a panic disorder and she has to go back to her parents, particularly the mother who brought her up under the shadow of her much-older brother AJ's death. Natalie needs a job, though, and stumbles across her long-lost niece Anna Kate, for whom she ends up working at the cafe.
Both women struggle with their pasts and how they're affecting the present, and how for each of them their time in Warwick proves transformative, not least because Zee's grandmother was one in a long line of women who baked magic pies containing messages from the dead to the living, a tradition Anna Kate apparently shares. Eventually both women and by extension their families and friends make peace and understanding and both heal the wounds of the past and set forth on a better future.
My first fear was that this was another The Night the Lights Went Out, full of self-consciously "southern" stereotypes, and given some of the themes of the book (family secrets, long-held grudges), it pointed that way.
But it's thankfully not, at least not to the cartoonish extent of that book. Remember that party I mentioned at the beginning? The book is filled with brief teases of storylines that are fascinating and engaging: a mysterious deadly accident, another mysterious deadly accident, long-lost family, magical pies and blackbirds, a family of seers and magic-makers or at least keepers of magic (the term witch is never used), taking a chance on love again, recovery, and much more.
We also have many diverse and distinct characters, many of them quite enjoyable, and their stories are engaging and easy for a reader to want to invest in and follow to their conclusions.
But sadly, all we get are teases. We don't get enough substantial content for there really to be anything more than that. Many characters show significant growth (and, unfortunately, several storylines just peter out) but their breakthroughs don't have the emotional heft they should if we were allowed to explore their stories more. I've spoken about maximalism and its dangers in storytelling, but honestly, there were too many exchanges in this book for which I'd sworn I'd missed a page or a conversation (I hadn't, I checked) because that's how out of the loop they feel.
I suspect part of the problem is the author is trying to do too much with too wide a cast, and she's not Lianne Moriarty, so it just comes across as pretty unfinished.
And it's a shame because this book is so close to casting such a beautiful, blackbird-filled spell of transformation and growth. But ultimately, just too much character development and plot is missing for it to be anything more than a whiff of the rich tale it could've been.
Sometimes the most disappointing parties aren't the ones that out and out stunk, but the ones that could've just been better.
Notable:
A floppy beige bucket hat shaded his eyes as he said, "Good morning, ma'am."
Ma'am. I'd been called ma'am at least two dozen times in the past week, and despite learning the term was a southern courtesy used on any woman, it still set my teeth on edge. Unless you were geriatric, no one used "ma'am" up north. (pg 15)
This has definitely not been my experience. The character's strange aversion to "ma'am" is attributed mostly to her northern upbringing but it just seems, well, strange.
____________________________________________________________________________
"Doc mentioned that you were on all kinds of committees and organizations down in Montgomery."
I had been. Everything from the historical society and the Daughters of the Confederacy to the Junior League and church ministries. I'd dropped a lot of it when I finally got pregnant-- something that had taken a good four and a half years of trying--- and I always wished now that I hadn't cut myself off so completely. (pg 26)
Yikes. Just casually dropping Daughters of the Confederacy. Is that common for Alabama? Probably! Thus the yikes.
__________________________________________________________________________
Mama never used Ollie's nickname, claiming it a ridiculous name for a girl, and that people were going to think she was a boy.
As if that were possible with her long hair, bow lips, arched eyebrows, and button nose. Not to mention the skorts she wore, the pink lace-trimmed shirt with her monogram on the pocket, and matching pink sandals. (pg 31)
Just a reminder that Ollie (full name: Olivia Jane) is a literally a toddler. I guess creepy issues with gender run in their family.
__________________________________________________________________________
Jenna's smile was bright against her dark skin as she glanced over at me. (pg 40)
I couldn't tell if this is an awkward way of saying that Jenna is Black or just a slightly strange comment about the hue of her skin.
_________________________________________________________________________
"Yes, I do know. I loved my son so much that I wanted what was best for him. Parents want what's best for our children, and if that comes across as harsh sometimes, then so be it. Eden was opinionated and headstrong and came from questionable bloodlines-- between Zee's hippie ways and a practically anonymous father... Eden didn't fit in our world. She wouldn't have been happy," Seelie said. "There are expectations that come with being a Linden. Could you imagine Eden at a Junior League meeting?" (pg 200)
I guess it's not a surprise that her daughter casually mentions Daughters of the Confederacy if her mother uses the phrase "questionable bloodlines", yikes.
________________________________________________________________________
"What's today's special?"
[...]
"Sausage and ramps mini-frittatas."
"Ramps? How very southern of you."
"Not true. I simply discovered some growing at the back of Zee's garden and thought I'd try them."(pg 207)
I raised an eyebrow at this since I had only been familiar with ramps in northern climates, but apparently they are popular in Appalachia.
__________________________________________________________________________
"Where did you two live before here?" Though they were two of the kindest, gentlest souls I'd ever come across, they weren't very forthcoming with information about themselves.
"Here, there, and everywhere," Bow said. "We're gypsies at heart." (pg 252)
Would a Alabaman over the age of forty in 2019 (I assume: there's no mention I could see of cell phones or the internet-- or even television, for that matter) use that term? Probably. Is it still a racial slur you shouldn't use and in this case "wanderer" or "nomad" would work just as well? Absolutely.
__________________________________________________________________________
Once upon a time there was a family of Celtic women with healing hands and giving hearts, who knew the value of the earth and used its abundance to heal, to soothe, to comfort. (pg 289)
Some mention is made of Anna Kate's "roots" by her grandmother to her mother, and the fact Anna Kate's grandmother Zee was the one to act as a guardian to the berry trees populated by blackbirds, including a quasi mystical pie ingredient. This passage is given as a sort of backstory of Anna Kate's roots. So would that make them "Wise Women"? From the description, yes. Given the themes of ostracism in the book, I'm kind of surprised that "witchcraft" (or accusations thereof) don't come up, but honestly the book isn't doing enough with what it has as it is, so it's fine.
________________________________________________________________________
Midnight at the Blackbird Café is her first work of women's fiction.
From the "about the author" blurb. I probably really don't want to go into what is classified as "women's fiction" and what isn't, but I do know the term makes me twitchy.
Final Grade: B-
DON'T FORGET I'M ON BLOGSPOT NOW!