Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame

Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford
Published by Pamela Dorman Books
Publication date: January 30, 2024
Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit

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The trend of lighter reading has been working for me so I thought I’d wrap up April with one more charming novel. Mainly because it combined two things I really love: a favorite TV show and sumptuous descriptions of baking. The novel is Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame and is about Jenny, a 77-year-old British woman who applies to and gets on a national TV show called Britain Bakes. And yes, this fictional show is modelled on the iconic Great British Baking Show.

Jenny has lived a simple life with Bernard, her husband of almost 60 years. She finds baking to be her most fulfilling endeavor in the way it brings people together and because she uses her trove of old family recipes to stay connected with the past. It’s her comfort and way of showing love and she bakes for every occasion, using recipes handed down for generations, but often adding her own twist. At the same time, she’s starting to feel as if her life hasn’t meant much, that she’s never really accomplished anything significant. It’s this mindset that leads her to apply for the wildly popular Britain Bakes competition show.

Mrs. Quinn is a bit slow to reveal itself at the beginning, kind of like Jenny herself. She’s happy with Bernard, but he’s older and content to settle into his last days by puttering around the house and doing the daily crossword. Jenny’s discomfort with her life is internal, but after she’s accepted on the show and reveals her secret to Bernard, the novel peels away from the present excitement of baking and competition to give brief glimpses into her life when she was a teenager. In the same way time is needed for the best bakes to develop their flavor we start to get a deeper sense of this quiet woman.

I’ve been comfortable reading fiction written about characters of all ages, but I’m starting to shift a bit and am being drawn more to the experiences of older women. Jenny’s perspective is one not often seen. Our world is youth focused and there’s an invisibility that increases with every year we age, so there’s pleasure in reading about a woman in her 70s daring to do something most of us would never do.

For younger readers, the questions of purpose and what makes a life valuable—being a mother, not being a mother, career, no career—will still feel familiar. That these themes were blended with with dry British humor and vivid descriptions of everything Jenny baked (my sweet tooth was killing me!) made Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame a rewarding treat.

 

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