Synopsis:
In The Spoon Stealer, author Lesley Crewe takes readers from World War I England to 1960’s Nova Scotia with a spoon-stealing memoirist who inherits the family farm . . . and her family.
Born into a basket of clean sheets — and, in the process, ruining a perfectly good load of laundry — Emmeline never quite fit in on her family’s Nova Scotian farm. And after suffering multiple losses during the First World War, her family became so heavy with grief and mental illness that Emmeline felt the weight smothering her. So she fled across the Atlantic and built a life for herself in England.
Now seventy-four years old and retired, she lives in the small fishing village of Leigh-on-Sea, England, with Vera, her beloved small white dog. When she enlists in a four-week memoir-writing course at the local library, her past unfolds for a captivated audience and friendships are formed. She even shares her third-biggest secret with her new friends. She is a compulsive spoon stealer.
When Emmeline unexpectedly inherits the farm she grew up on back in Nova Scotia, she needs to see what remains of her family one last time. She arrives in their lives like a proverbial tornado, an off-kilter Mary Poppins bossing everyone around . . . and getting quite a lot wrong.
But with her generosity and hard-earned wisdom, she gets an awful lot right, too. Like a pinball ricocheting between people, offending and inspiring in equal measure, Emmeline, in her final years, believes that a spoonful — perhaps several spoonfuls — of kindness can heal a family broken by losses and secrecy.
Review:
Lesley Crewe, the author of fourteen books, grew up in Montreal, as did her now-retired husband. But she has resided in the same house in rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, for more than forty-five years and considers it a sanctuary where their grown children can visit and their pets are remembered. She relates that she became a writer in her effort to understand her world — and avoid housework — and soon found that it brought her great joy. She shares her enthusiasm with her readers, reveling in “ordinary moments” and celebrating “everyday things” that are “too often lost in the race for something grand.” She believes that “the simplest of pleasures” are what make people truly happy and strives to create memories of them in her writing.
Emmeline Darling was born on a summer morning in 1894. She arrived so quickly that her mother did not have time to grab her before she plopped right into the basket of freshly laundered linens her mother was in the process of hanging up to dry. “I don’t think she ever forgave me for bloodying those beautiful white sheets,” Emmeline writes in her memoir, excerpts of which are featured in the story, detailing Emmeline’s life experiences. She recalls that her mother never really seemed to know what to do with her as she grew up on their Nova Scotian farm with her four older brothers. Oh, Emmeline is sure that her mother loved her, but she tried her mother’s patience and was always aware that her mother didn’t like her very much. Emmeline was a “big” girl who worked hard on the farm alongside her brothers, but was not particularly well-liked in school, either.
The tale opens in 1968. Emmeline, who never had children and has been retired for eight years, confronts her loneliness. Urged on by her devoted and delightful talking dog, Vera (the story of how Vera came to live with Emmeline is both hilarious and reveals the opinionated Emmeline’s tenacity), Emmeline enrolls in a four-week course on memoir writing led by the officious and self-important Joyce Pruitt, who “fancied herself a writer of sorts, having had a few articles and poems published in the local paper.” Emmeline and five other women gather at the local library, their first assignment having been to commence penning their memoir, something Emmeline did well before signing up for the course. As each woman reads her work aloud, Emmeline praises and encourages them. But when Emmeline begins reading, the other would-be memoirists are mesmerized not by “What she wrote,” but, rather, “how she wrote it.” Emmeline finds herself drained after reading a few pages. “When you read it out loud to people, it’s like living it all over again, but it’s not the same,” she tells Vera. “Which is the truth — what happened, or my memory of what happened?”
A spoonful of kindness is all anyone ever needs.
Emmeline does not, however, reveal her compulsion to her fellow autobiographers that first day. But as she was making her tea when she arrived at the library, she slipped a small, ornate spoon that might have originated in a child’s tea set into her pocket and took it home with her. Emmeline is a spoon stealer, and over the years has amassed quite a collection that she keeps in an opulent Chinese enamel box that has brought her solace over the years.
About the first half of The Spoon Stealer is devoted to Emmeline’s burgeoning relationships with her classmates. They bond as Emmeline reads her memoir aloud and becomes an increasingly influential friend to each of them. They are an eclectic group. Widowed Sybil Weatherbee cares for her elderly mother and looks for ways to keep herself busy, Mrs. Tucker runs a fish and chips shop with her husband, Una is raising five children whose names all begin with “G” and perpetually has her hair up in curlers, and Harriet is self-conscious about her teeth. Flora, a devout believer in the Ten Commandments, allows her judgmental attitude to get in the way of friendship.
But it is the memoir that lays the foundation for the latter portion of the book. Emmeline reveals her family’s history, including the devastating losses they sustained, and the circumstances and events that brought about a lasting fracture between her and her surviving family members. She was just twenty-one years old when she set sail across the Atlantic all alone during World War I, determined to be at her beloved brother Teddy’s side. But once she reached Europe, she learned it would be impossible to get back home and remained there for years before returning home to Nova Scotia to be with her family. Although she did not intend to stay long, she ended up spending ten years there. Those years were marked by both further family tragedy, mental illness, resentments, and eventual estrangement, as well as the joy of watching the niece and nephew she adored grow up. But at thirty-five years of age, she found herself a “hopeless spinster” whose only source of “nightly entertainment was darning socks with my mother” so she knew she had to leave “to save her own life,” according to Crewe. She returned to Europe and remained there for more than forty years during which her life was filled with adventures, travel, and fascinating people. Emmeline’s memoir is richly detailed, emotionally riveting and, at times, overwhelmingly heartbreaking. Crewe shepherds readers through Emmeline’s triumphs and successes, as well as her disappointments and innermost emotional struggles, including one moment that Crewe says she found “very, very tough to write” and was in tears as she did so. “It still makes me heartsick thinking about it,” she relates. It is equally tough to read, but it is a pivotal point in Emmeline’s life and in critical ways informs her story.
Emmeline finds that reading her memoir aloud to her friends opens “the doors she’d been trying to keep nailed shut for years,” and it proves to be mentally and emotionally draining, but her supportive friends stand beside her as she unburdens herself, revealing the most shameful moment of her life and her biggest regret. Soon after, she is shocked to learn that her brother Martin, who lived on the family farm his entire life, has died at the age of eighty-two. And willed the property to her. She is baffled. Why would Martin choose to leave the farm to her? She realizes that she wants to see the farm again, as well as her family members, some of whom she has never met or communicated with.
It is a bittersweet homecoming, as she surveys the property remembering her childhood, her fractious relationship with her mother, and the happy times she spent with Teddy, the brother with whom she shared such a special, close relationship, and finds that little on the farm has changed. She catches up with her surviving brother, niece and nephew, and their children. Again, Crewe surrounds Emmeline with a compelling cast of fully developed, complex characters with a myriad of emotional struggles and their own constellation of tangled relationships. Emmeline has opinions about everything and does not hesitate to share them. It is a character trait that both endears her to some family members and angers others who see her as an interlo9per who has no standing to dispense advice about people or situations about which she lacks context and history. She begins renovating the farm, and makes plans for further improvements both to the property and her family’s lives but not all of her ideas are welcomed or embraced. Long-ago betrayals and simmering resentments surface and, in some cases, take Emmeline aback but force her to examine the past from others’ perspectives. After all, they remained in Nova Scotia while she lived a life completely separate and apart from her family — a life none of them know anything about.
The Spoon Stealer is entertaining, emotionally resonant, and thought-provoking. Emmeline is a complicated, multi-layered, and flawed, but endearing character who endures heartbreak, loss, and emotional abandonment, but perseveres. She is resilient, stubborn, self-aware, and determined to create a meaningful and purposeful life for herself, but throughout the years never loses sight of the lesson she learned from her dear Teddy — who “always made my life better” — as a young girl. “He told me that animals and people who are hurt only need a spoonful of kindness,” Emmeline relates in her memoir. And that outlook permeates every aspect of Emmeline’s existence, even when is a bit cantankerous and delights in letting Vera torment their unpleasant neighbor, Mr. Henderson, who fusses about his fastidious yard and precious garden gnome.
Crewe tackles difficult topics — war, mental illness, suicide, resentments and grudges, betrayals and secrets — in a frank, unsparing, but solidly compassionate manner. Even when her characters behave in despicable ways, Crewe humanizes them and gives readers insight into their histories and motivations. Some of her characters and their behavior are hilariously outrageous, while others’ brokenness and demises are horrifyingly, but believably tragic. Through her characters, she illustrates how challenging circumstances and fraught relationships have the power to derail and embitter some people, while strengthening others. And includes some delightful magical realism in the form of Vera, Emmeline’s sometimes sarcastically witty, but unwaveringly loyal dog. One revelation will take many readers by complete surprise, providing further insight into Emmeline’s choices and why they were absolutely right for her. And about those spoons? The impetus for Emmeline’s need to steal spoons wherever she goes is credibly explained . . . and resolved.
Crewe has crafted a steadily paced, always intriguing multi-generational story illustrating the power of family and friendships that is ultimately uplifting, and infused with hopefulness, grace, and joy. The Spoon Stealer is a thoroughly charming and engrossing story populated with unforgettable characters, a spoonful of whimsy, and a great deal of valuable wisdom.
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