Sandra Dallas, The Persian Pickle Club
During the 1930′s in Kansas, the drought lasted for so long that the crops burned up. There’s no job to be found and most people head to California or Florida to try their luck. For the farmers who stay put and their families, times are difficult, but the women from the Persian Pickle Club keep their heads up…
Sandra Dallas settled her Persian Pickle Club in the small town of Harveyville. Bossy Mrs. Judd, homely Ada June, famous for her bread pudding, out-of-this-world Opalina, shy Ella, Ceres, the founder of the club, Forrest Ann and her sister-in-law Nettie, Nettie’s daughter, Velma, who never shows up at the meetings, bitter Agnes T. Ritter and her mother and finally, Queenie Bean, narrator of the story, are the members of the club.
They meet on a regular basis, work on their quilts, exchange scraps of materials and bits of local gossips, while one of them reads to the group because "the Persian Pickle Club ha[s] been formed to improve the mind, not just to make bedcovers". Despite their differences and the occasional bickering, these women are tied by a solid friendship and an indefectible loyalty toward one another: they know how to keep a secret inside their circle and how to help each other through life’s trials.
When Tom Ritter (Agnes’s Brother) who left to go to university, comes back to Harveyville with his urbanite wife Rita, she is welcomed more or less warmly by the Persian Pickle members, who either rejoice in the perfume of novelty she brings with her or else become suspicious of her manners. Wearing fancy clothes, she doesn’t know how to quilt and has big ambitions: she wants to become a journalist and has no interest in farming or in a housewifey lifestyle. Queenie however has decided that Rita will be her new best friend at any costs, even after she finds out she and Rita have very few in common.
When a body is unearthed from one of the neighboring fields, Rita wants to write an article for the newspaper that employs her and moreover sets her mind on solving the mystery and finding the killer herself. Her investigation is soon met with reluctance by the inhabitants of Harveyville. Her main discovery however will end up being the meaning of friendship…
This story of trust and solidarity, doubled with a nice whodunit, is one of the best novels I have read in a while. The choice of Queenie as a narrator accounts for a non-sophisticated but straightforward and efficient style. Reading Sandra Dallas is always a pleasure, Mattie and Queenie are two heroines with enjoyable similar personalities… Dallas’s writing evokes what it must have been to listen to a story-teller in a small country village, before the TV set became part of every household, when stories were told on evenings near a blazing fire…
By the way, if you wonder about the title of the book, you will have to read the story to find out its meaning…
Rating: 4/5
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