The author of the bestselling The Cure for Death by Lightning returns to rural British Columbia and its themes of alienation, brutality and boredom for her second novel, A Recipe for Bees. Augusta Olsen is a woman who lives very much in the present, which she spends in an apartment in town with her elderly husband, Karl; but she also looks back to the past, and the early days of her marriage on a remote farm dominated by Karl's obnoxious, bullying father. It's not giving anything away to say that the book charts the death and resurrection of the marriage, for the plot is revealed on the cover, but Anderson-Dargatz is better at misery than at happiness, and the late-blossoming love affair is, though tentatively tasteful, ultimately unconvincing. If you loved the first book you'll still like this one: if you haven't read her at all, this definitely isn't the place to begin.
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