Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 19 February 2009.
Three single women join a choir all looking to find different things, a new challenge, friendship, a new man. What they do find is each other and come together on a project to restore an old Cornish house and turn it in to a spa. Expect laughter and tears and a very entertaining novel from this author who not only cooks but writes a good story too.
Three women in their fifties - one widowed, one divorced and one never married - meet when they join a choir. Lucy, a food journalist, is obeying her bossy daughter who prescribes singing to assuage her grief. Joanna, the successful businesswoman for whom failure is not an option, is tackling her inability to sing a note.
And much-divorced Rebecca is unashamedly looking for another mate. When they decide to combine their talents to restore a run down hotel on the Cornish coast and turn it into a spa offering holiday courses, conflict is bound to result. Lucy, Joanna and Rebecca are a sympathetic and engaging trio, very different women, each with private demons to confront.
We feel for them as they cope, or fail to cope, with the pain of the past and fear for the future. Prue Leith makes their intertwined journeys riveting and ultimately satisfying, even uplifting. The choir teaches them a good deal more than how to sing...
As a cook, restaurateur, food writer and business woman, Prue Leith has played a key role in the revolution of Britain’s eating habits since the Sixties. In 1995, having published twelve cookbooks, she gave up writing about food to concentrate on fiction. She has published five novels, the latest of which is A Serving of Scandal. Prue lives in Notting Hill, London and Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire.
