The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom is a historical fiction book that takes place when slavery was prevalent in the south. The story follows two narratives over more than a decade: Lavinia, a white child forced into indentured labor when her parents die on the crossing from Ireland to America; and Bell a young woman and a kitchen slave who is also the illegitimate daughter of the plantation owner.
Lavinia lives and works on the tobacco plantation and soon becomes bonded to her surrogate family; she is so bound to this family that she doesn’t realize the differences in their skin color and what that means. But all is not right with the family she serves. Ms. Martha take laudanum to get through the day, the Captain is never home and although he is good to his slaves, his caretaker, Rankin, is not, and Mr. Marshall, the young master, faces abuse that will mark his whole future.
As Lavinia ages she is soon accepted into this white world she is all but unfamiliar with and finds she must make a choice. Will Lavinia be loyal to her black family or will she adopt the views of the white world she belongs in?
This was a book chosen for my bi-monthly book club. I wasn’t really interested in it at first glance, so I decided to go with the audio book. The audio was done quite well. The narrator did an excellent job and was very believable. The book itself was a fine read and one that would definitely work for a book club.
This book is not for the feint of heart, like most slave narratives there were times when this book was brutal and it definitely didn’t pull any punches.
My biggest problem with the book is that almost all the problems could have been avoid or solved by talking to each other. Yes, this happens all the time in real life but when it happens to this extent in fiction it just bugs me. Especially since the majority of people knew what was going on except for one or two key players. It just didn’t seem realistic to me at times. There were also a few lose ends that were just forgotten about and that irked me too.
This book gets 3.5 stars from me. It was a good read that kept me interested but there were some flaws too. Maybe it’s just because this is not my go to genre but this was just not a the for me.
That’s all for now!
-M-