12 S UNDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2022IN EVERY KITCHEN,there’s at least one cooking imple-
ment that means more to its owners than the food they
cook with it. Maybe it’s a humble cast-iron pan, called into
omelet service on Saturday mornings, or a pineapple-
shaped cutting board inherited from an old roommate who
made the best guacamole. In my mom’s kitchen, the un-
sung hero is an ancient mixing bowl — orange on the out-
side, white on the inside — used to bake five decades’
worth of macaroni and cheese from a recipe perfected by
my grandfather. Some families have crystal and caviar;
ours has Pyrex and elbow noodles.
In Charmaine Wilkerson’s sprawling, vibrant, second-
chance-celebrating debut novel, BLACK CAKE (Ballantine, 400
pp., $28), a cloudy plastic measuring cup holds more than
ounces, cups and milliliters. For Benny and Byron Ben-
nett, adult siblings who have been forcibly reunited by or-
phanhood, that measuring cup represents all the love their
mother, Eleanor, poured into the signature dessert she
learned to bake on the island where she grew up. That
would be — you guessed it — black cake, a “moist, loamy”
confection, “essentially a plum pudding handed down to
the Caribbeans by colonizers from a cold country.”
Eleanor made the cake for Christmas and wedding anni-
versaries, and even buried her husband with a slice. Be-
fore her own death, she placed a small one in the freezer,
along with a note for Benny and Byron: “I want you to sit
down together and share the cake when the time is right.
You’ll know when.” She also left a voice recording to be
played for her children by her lawyer. One could argue that
this isn’t the most original narrative device, but I found it
irresistible, right down to the attorney’s unctuous stage-
managing of the proceedings.
Wilkerson approaches her plot like a mad chef, grabbing
ingredients from all over the world, slicing and dicing with
abandon, tossing characters and palm fronds and a few
drops of rum into a pot and letting it all come to a simmer.
She isn’t measuring, she’s eyeballing, as confident cooks
do, and she’s not going to hold your hand as you learn your
way around her kitchen.
Instead you’re plunged into a roiling soup of family se-
crets, big lies, great loves, bright colors and strong smells.
You’ll meet a pair of young swimmers who are desperate
to paddle away from the constraints of their homeland; a
father who gets backed into bartering his daughter’s fu-
ture; an “ethno-food guru” with questions about her own
background; parents who regret their cold response to a
child’s most personal revelation; and a mother who has
lived so many lives, it’s hard to keep track of where one
ends and another begins.While I pieced together the complicated history of the
Bennett family — how Eleanor met her husband, what
brought them to California, why Benny and Byron dislike
each other and much more — I kept looking forward to the
recipe for black cake. I was sure it would appear at the
back of the book. But when Benny (who dreams of opening
her own cafe) finally finds her mother’s recipe tucked
away in a junk drawer, “it has no numbers, no quantities at
all.” She realizes it “was never so much a list of firm quanti-
ties and instructions as a series of hints for how to pro-
ceed.” Isn’t this the case with most beloved dishes? The
recipe is beside the point.
The siblings eventually come together, in their own way,
with separate plans for carrying on their complicated lega-
cy. There are empty seats at the table, but we can imagine
the faces of the missing. By now, they’re family. 0Group Text/‘Black Cake,’ by Charmaine Wilkerson/By Elisabeth EganHow many times can a woman cook up a new life — and what happens when she runs out of steam?
A brother and sister learn
the truth about their mother
only when it’s too late to ask
questions. Now they have to
figure out how, when and
with whom to carry out her
last wish.“Black Cake” explores the
ways we use meals not just
to nourish ourselves but to
help tell unspeakable stories.
Family, food, festering re-
sentment — you’ll find plenty
to chew on.ELISABETH EGANis an editor at the Book Review and the author of “A Window Opens.”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONSWilkerson writes, “Sometimes, the stories we don’t tell people
about ourselves matter even more than the things we do say.” What
does this mean in your life?
+One of the characters in this book believes her father has stolen her
destiny. Is such a thing possible?
+
At some point in this book, every character is an outsider. What
makes each of them feel as if he or she belongs — or is at least
standing on firm ground?SUGGESTED READINGTHE NICKEL BOYS, by Colson Whitehead.What do we take with us and what do we
leave behind without a backward glance? Wilkerson asks these questions —
and so does Whitehead in this short, unsparingly candid novel about two
boys who land in a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. “Truth,” White-
head writes, “was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by
hands when you weren’t looking, alluring and ever out of reach.”MALIBU RISING, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. If you’re in the mood for another multi-
generational saga about fractious siblings and mysterious parents, head up
the coast to catch a wave with the Riva family of Malibu. You might see a bit
of Eleanor Bennett in Reid’s Nina Riva — another woman who is determined
to hold her family together while keeping certain information to herself.To join the conversation about “Black Cake,” go to our Face-
book page, @nytbooks, or our Instagram, @NYTBooks.Welcome to Group Text, a monthly column for readers
and book clubs about the novels, memoirs and short-
story collections that make you want to talk, ask ques-
tions and dwell in another world for a little bit longer.