The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

Reviewed by Ambrea

After her mother died, Emily Benedict arrived in Mullaby, North Carolina, with the hope of solving some of the riddles that had plagued her for years—and, more importantly, get to know the grandfather she never knew.  But, as she digs deep into the mysteries of her mother’s adolescence, she discovers that Mullaby is rife with mysteries:  rooms where wallpaper changes to suit a person’s mood, unexplained lights that appear at midnight, and magical cakes—like those of Julia Winterson.

Julia, who has returned to her former hometown, is known and loved for her cakes.  She has a magical touch with flour, butter, milk, eggs, and sugar that seems to enthrall the entire town; however, Julia doesn’t just bake to keep herself and her father’s business afloat:  she bakes to recall the past and, she hopes, bring back a lost love.  She hopes to leave as soon as she can.  Her rocky relationship with Sawyer aside, Julia wants to leave Mullaby—and her hurtful past—behind.

But Mullaby is not what Emily or Julia has come to expect.  Together, they will discover a richness and beauty to Mullaby that they’ve never seen—and a love that they never thought they would find.

I actually picked up The Girl Who Chased the Moon as an audiobook.  It’s one of the first audiobooks I’ve listened to since Hank the Cowdog was considered one of my favorites—back when we still had a cassette tape player in our car—so it’s rather special to me, since it revived and heightened my interest in listening to books again.  Although I’ve listened to other audiobooks that I’ve enjoyed a little more than Sarah Addison Allen’s novel (such as Dante and Aristotle Discover the Secrets of the Universe and Kitchens of the Great Midwest), I was pleasantly surprised by The Girl Who Chased the Moon.

Like both Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen, Allen’s novel is filled with little unexpected joys, everyday magic that jumps out and surprises you.  Like the wallpaper in Emily’s room, or Sawyer’s “sweet sense,” or the secrets of the Mullaby’s most illustrious family, or the frogs that hold a special significance for Emily’s grandfather.  It’s fascinating to see this magical dynamic at work in Mullaby, to see how the town accepts and even celebrates some of its local oddities.

Speaking of oddities, I found I really liked Julia and her magical ability to bake delicious cakes.  More than any other character, maybe even more than Emily, Julia held a special place in my heart.  I liked her for her troubled adolescence and her steely resolve to live her own life, to leave Mullaby behind once she gets her father’s business and her rocky relationship with Sawyer settled.  She’s essentially damaged by her past, by a number of bad years in her youth, but she has managed to heal and reinvent herself and, more importantly, grow into the woman she wishes to be.

I’m not saying Julia isn’t flawed, and I’m not saying she isn’t damaged.  She isn’t perfect, and I admire her for overcoming a number of challenges in her life—and yet she still manages to have hope.  That’s why she continues to bake, why she continues to leave the window open when she’s making her cakes:  she has hope for a better future and hope for reconnecting with someone she thought she’d lost forever.  It’s heart-warming and wonderful.

And I loved it.

I also thought Rebecca Lowman, who narrated the novel, did a splendid job of distinguishing between characters and reviving the cadence of a small North Carolina town.  She helped breathe life into the characters, playing upon the drawl and twang sometimes found in Appalachia, and she did a wonderful job of pacing the story, allowing it to unfold naturally.  While the story was sometimes strange—and, sometimes, I didn’t always enjoy the characters Ms. Lowman played—I found I enjoyed it overall.  It’s a sweet novel with a decent narrator, intriguing (and, occasionally, baffling) characters, and a beautiful little love story thrown into the mix.

Moon Struck: The Girl Who Chased the Moon

Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen (F ALL Avoca)

Reviewed by Jeanne

Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of the Southern Grotesque. I know, writers have won prizes and honors writing about damaged people and places and yes, I know there are people like that. It’s just that I never saw them as oddities, but simply a part of life; and I never liked books that held them up for examination and dissection, like some sort of exotic insect. I’m also not attracted to the “quaint Southern fiction” which features naïve people agape at them there big city ways which prove to be inferior to good ol’ homespun life or the reverse, where the small town folk are small-minded as well. I’ve usually found the truth to be in between.

That’s why I’m somewhat wary of books tagged “Southern fiction.” I tend to regard such with more than a pinch of suspicion.

However, I kept reading the most intriguing reviews about The Girl Who Chased the Moon. Magical, they said. Enchanted and enchanting, bewitching and beguiling, they said. Lyrical, they said. Lesa's was the tipping point, when I put the book on reserve for myself, just to see for myself if this was as good as advertised. (Lesa's Book Critiques is must reading for me, and anyone who likes thoughtful, well-written book reviews. See for yourself: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/)

Know what? The reviews were right. This is a book I was loathe to put down but I dreaded seeing end. Allen has a town spun of cotton candy but without the nasty sticky sweetness of that particular confection, a place both modern and timeless; a place of stardust and moonlight but with bit of straw tucked between its teeth, a plate of North Carolina barbecue balanced on its lap and a big piece of Milky Way cake on the side. (Yes, food abounds; from pizza to pastry, barbecue to stack cake. Cake is a welcome, a character says, except for coconut. Coconut cake and fried chicken are for funerals.)

The story opens as Emily Benedict arrives in Mullaby, North Carolina with all her worldly possessions packed into two duffle bags. Her mother, Dulcie, had never told Emily anything about her past, nothing about the town where she had grown up, and nothing about the giant of man who is Emily’s grandfather, who seems almost as bewildered as Emily by this turn of events. It doesn’t take long before Emily finds out that no one else seems to share her view of her mother. The Dulcie Emily knew was the eternal crusader for good, out to save the planet and help others, a woman who founded a school to promote justice and caring. Who is this other Dulcie, the spoiled only child who did something so terrible that an entire town isn’t about to forgive her—or her daughter?

I fell in love with every character; well, maybe not Julia’s stepmother, a gold-digging self centered piece of work. However, Mullaby—and yep, I’m sure the resemblance to “Lullaby” is intentional— is the kind of place where you know in your bones there is some justice in the world. There’s Julia, the former wild child who was a cutter and bears the scars to prove it, who came back to bake cakes in her late father’s restaurant until she earns enough to pay off the debts. Then she’ll be off to pursue her own dreams of a pastry shop in New York. There’s Sawyer Anderson, the only man Julia ever loved, who seems to show up everywhere and who can feel cake in the air. There’s Win Coffey, a handsome young man who seems drawn to Emily, yet whose family has suffered the most from whatever Dulcie had done. There’s Vance, Emily’s gigantic grandfather, who inspired awe and fear but who is as gentle as a fawn and almost as timid.

And there are the Mullaby lights, these strange lights that appear in the town after dark and who seem especially to appear around Emily. Are they ghosts? Swamp gas? Swarms of fireflies? Or --something else?

The writing is fine, and I mean that in the drawn out pronunciation, as in fine wines. Allen has a way of explaining things that is at once poetic and practical. For example, Julia’s description of Southern men: “They remind you of something good—picnics or carrying sparklers around at night. Southern men will hold doors open for you, they’ll hold you after you yell at them, and they’ll hold onto their pride no matter of what. Be careful what they tell you, though. They have a way of making you believe anything, because they say it THAT WAY.”

I might say the same thing about Sarah Addison Allen.

I also wonder if she will share that stack cake recipe.

(Update: She does! Along with Red Velvet, Lane Cake and Southern Peach Pound Cake! Check out her website:
www.sarahaddisonallen.com
for recipes, an interactive map of Mullaby and more.)