A novel to tease your senses and surprise your soul, this is a beautifully bittersweet read. Peggy’s son asks her to write her story, so she writes a recipe and with each recipe comes a slice of history, a memory, a connection. Each chapter and recipe is headed by the name of the person telling their story, their connection to Peggy and the year. Each person narrates their own memory, their tales fusing together with both heart and soul to unmask the essence of Peggy. Manon Steffan Ros writes with an exquisitely sharp blade, every distinct part adding up to become a perfectly flawed whole. Covering a period of just over seventy years, the separate tales evoke a flood of contrasting emotions. The Seasoning is a charming, heartbreaking and captivating novel which deserves high praise indeed. ~ Liz Robinson
A 'Piece of Passion' from the publisher...
The Seasoning looks beneath the surface of a happy family and finds swirling emotional undercurrents that dragged me in and left me breathless. As a young girl, Peggy survives by her wits, nourished by the compassion of outsiders. As an adult she gives love and succour as freely as her mouthwatering recipes are shared with readers of the book. But hidden behind the kindnesses is a secret as dark and sticky as the treacle she stirs into her ginger cake. Evocative and emotionally intelligent, The Seasoning is unputdownable in Welsh or English! I loved it enough to persuade the author to rewrite it in a second language. ~ Caroline Oakley, Editor, Honno Press
Peggy’s not so keen on telling her own story, but each of her family and neighbours has a story to tell, revealing not just Peggy’s life but that of her village, tucked beneath Cader Idris on the southern fringes of Snowdownia. Bookended by Peggy’s own shocking testimony, each chapter has a different voice and a different take on events, from the jolly fat woman who is feeding not just Peggy but her own sense of emptiness, to the generous shopkeeper and his young son, who has had his eye on Peggy for a long time, and Peggy’s best friend, who’s not sure she’s cut out for marriage to the church and its curator. As the village voices fill out the picture of life in Llanegryn, slowly the reader realises that all is not well, and that Peggy’s eccentricities have a terrible dark secret hidden behind them - and not just that she was a neglected child.
Manon Steffan Ros was brought up in Rhiwlas, Bangor, north Wales. She won the Drama Medal twice at the National Eisteddfod (2005 and 2006) and her first novel, Fel Aderyn (Like a Bird) was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award, 2010. She won the Tir na n-Og prize for children's liteature twice, in 2010 and 2012, with Trwy'r Tonnau (Through the Waves) and Prism (Prism). Her novel Blasu (The Seasoning) was originally published in Welsh to critical acclaim in 2012 and won the 2013 Wales Book of the Year Welsh Fiction category.
