![]() ![]() As the story opens, the siblings are meeting with their mother's estate lawyer, who tells them she's left a long. Charmaine Wilkerson's first novel, Black Cake, tells the story of Eleanor Bennett and her adult children Byron and Benedetta (aka Benny). Of how untold stories shape people’s lives, both when they are withheld and when they are revealed. Black Cake is a captivating debut that centers around the revelation of one woman's secrets. Readers who have a hard time suspending their disbelief when it comes. As Wilkerson writes near the end as Benny and Byron come to terms with their family narrative: They “sit there silently for a moment, thinking of small but profound inheritances. You might not like Black Cake if you dislike shifting POVs and large casts of characters. ![]() There’s much more to recommend here, including weighty themes about race, identity and protecting the environment, as well as the power of family recipes to convey love without words, but the fun is in the reading. Like the flash fiction format, it’s sometimes confusing initially, but ultimately rewarding when the whole story coalesces by the end. ![]() The novel truly puts the “omni” in its omniscient narrator, with plot driven mostly by internal dialogue and flashbacks. Or as Benny wonders in her own head as she grapples with her parents’ history: “This is who they have always been, an African American family of Caribbean origin, a clan of untold stories and half-charted cultures.” There’s the face they present to their fellow characters in the novel, then there’s their true backstory, which often flips that public face on its head. ![]()
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