Title : The Kitchen House
Author : Kathleen Grissom
Narrators : Orlagh Cassidy, Bahni Turpin
Genre : Historical
Publisher : Blackstone Audio
Listening Length : 12 hours 55 minutes
Rating : 2/5
Narrator Rating : 4/5
At 7 years of age Lavinia is brought in as an indentured servant to the plantation of Capt. James Pyke. The only difference between the other house servants and her is that they are black and she is white. As a child she is put under the care of Belle Pyke who runs the kitchen. Over time with the help of the love and compassion shown to her by her adopted family, Lavinia grows up, learns and assumes more responsibilities and becomes a part of the big house. As she makes the transition from servant to an official family member, she is beset with new challenges. The life she has looked forward to has changed forever.
This was a long, layered and engrossing novel. Kathleen Grissom builds up her large cast of characters with care and detail, so that we come to know each one very well. Through her descriptions of events and conversations she paints a picture of a plantation home and its slave population. The slaves either work in the fields – hard labor, and come under the purview of the overseer, or in the big house – relatively better lives under the direct supervision of Big Mama. The master, James Pyke, is away for long periods of time and so the day-to-day running of the place is left to the cruel overseer. The mistress has a long history of depression, and is used to heavy doses of laudanum, essentially leaving the running of the house and the care of her two children to Big Mama. While Big Mama and her family are kind, just folk, even they cannot sometimes prevent the cruel influences of the overseer and the children’s tutor.
It is always difficult to tell a story with such a large cast of characters, so kudos to author Grissom on telling the tale with such aplomb, such drama and such great pace. I found her descriptions and her eventful telling of events just right so I think she is a great storyteller. However every great story deserves a great ending and characters we can root for in the hope they prevail. Unfortunately here both are missing. Thus this book reduces to a long list of all the evil things that can happen and all the sad turns of fate that can take place, and nothing more.
Essentially my poor rating of this book boils down to the dislike of the main character. This is Lavinia’s story. She has the unique position of being able to tread into both the black and white worlds (because, although they co-exist they are very different from each other) and have affectionate ties to both. However, instead of the strong, just heroine we so needed, I found her to be a weak, whiny character, often unable to think of anyone else’s predicament but her own.
Living her life on the plantation, and witness to the many cruelties visited on the slave population Lavinia is still unable to comprehend the grimness of the situation and the underlying sadness, and lives in some kind of fantasyland where she believes that cruelties will stop just because of her presence. Although she is a good person, she lacked reasoning and vision, and is unable to actually see other people for what they really were. She is unable to translate good thoughts into just actions, instead curling up into a ball and retiring into her rooms at the very whiff of impending tragedy. Lavinia’s hapless fate might have been similar to most relatively just white women in those days, who could not affect any change against the strong will of the white males, but she, as a weak, listless lead protagonist brings this otherwise accomplished novel down quite a few notches.
This novel is a sad, depressing tale, but that in my view wasn’t its real problem.
Narrators: I have heard books by Turpin before and Cassidy is just as pleasant, so I do think the narrators did a great job.
