APRIL 2022 - AudioFile
A complex family story simmers in this audiobook. Lynnette Freeman and Simone Mcintyre narrate with appropriate energy, wielding rich, precise voices with aplomb. After the recent death of their mother, Benny and Byron are presented with a recording that promises to illuminate family secrets. Once this frame story is established, the narrative breaks into various accounts of the family’s origins, which are emotionally delivered but often challenging to follow in the audio format. The anecdotes are well told—they move briskly, and the narrators are invested in them. But each shift in timeframe or character requires the listener to readjust. While the strengths of Freeman and Mcintyre are evident in both exposition and dialogue, the listener would benefit from the ability to flip back through the pages of a print edition. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
Black Cake is a character-driven, multigenerational story that’s meant to be savored. . . . Thought-provoking and poignant.”—Time
“A thrilling debut novel about sibling ties and hidden family history.”—Glamour
“As delicious as the titular dessert.”—W Magazine
“Wilkerson explores the nuances of racial identity and betrayal in a powerful novel.”—Vogue (UK)
“Black Cake is a satisfying literary meal, heralding the arrival of a new novelist to watch.”—Associated Press
“A stellar first-time entry from a talented new writer that’s full of food, surfing, and rich patois.”—BET
“Crafted with delicate intention and textured with a blend of perspectives.”—Vulture
“I was instantly taken in by this multigenerational tale of identity, family, and the lifelong push and pull of home. This novel has a tremendous heart at its center, and I felt its beat on every page. What an extraordinary debut.”—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
“Exquisite and expansive, Black Cake took ahold of me from the first page and didn’t let go. This is a novel about the formation and reformation of a family, and the many people, places, and events that can shape our inheritances without our knowing. A gripping, poignant debut from an important, new voice.”—Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What’s Mine and Yours
“Black Cake has all the ingredients of the tastiest stories: secrets, romance, danger, and a cast of characters so real you want to scream at them one moment and hug them the next.”—Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
“So beautifully written I’m struggling to believe it’s a debut . . . The cake is the glue that holds all the layers together and the scenes are so well drawn I could almost taste the cake, feel the warm sea on my skin.”—Nikki May, author of Wahala
“With fantasy-like sensual detail, Wilkerson slips through time and place to explore the emotional weight of family traditions passed down through generations to heirs challenged to find their own emotional truths.”—Lucy Sanna, author of The Cherry Harvest
“Fans of family dramas by Ann Patchett, Brit Bennett, and Karen Joy Fowler should take note. Black Cake marks the launch of a writer to watch, one who masterfully plumbs the unexpected depths of the human heart.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Wilkerson uses one Caribbean American family’s extraordinary tale to probe universal issues of identity and how the lives we live and the choices we make leave ‘a trail of potential consequences’ that pass down through generations.”—Booklist (starred review)
Library Journal - Audio
06/01/2022
Estranged siblings Benny and Byron are reluctantly reunited after the death of their mother, Eleanor. She's left them a traditional Caribbean black cake and a long voice recording that unspools a family history kept secret for nearly 50 years. As they listen to the recording, the novel explores not just Eleanor's life and secrets, but also the siblings' childhood, their adult years, and the events that led to their estrangement. Two exceptional performances from narrators Lynnette Freeman and Simone Mcintyre bring Wilkerson's globe-trotting, decade-spanning debut novel vividly to life. Freeman narrates the bulk of the book in a deep, rich tone that works for characters of all ages and genders. Mcintyre voices the recording left by Eleanor in a gentle, musical Caribbean accent. The similarities in their voices create continuity between the novel's sections, while highlighting the recording that is the story's central element. VERDICT Grounded but filled with feeling, the narrators' performances perfectly match the tenor of Wilkerson's emotional novel. Highly recommended.—Emily Calkins
Library Journal
★ 02/01/2022
DEBUT Wilkerson's debut brings together two estranged siblings after the death of their mother, Eleanor. Byron, a successful biologist, has stuck by his family through his father's and now his mother's deaths. After 10 years apart, he sees his sister Benny at the reading of their mother's will. The siblings, who used to be inseparable, are instructed to listen to a recording their mother left, then share the black cake (her old family recipe for special occasions) "when the time is right." The recording reveals a hidden past filled with tragedy and heartache neither child could have imagined. The siblings learn about Covey, who lives in the Caribbean, is abandoned by her mother at an early age, and falls for a boy named Gibbs. When Covey is accused of murder, she leaves home with only a wooden box and her mother's black cake recipe. The story moves to Britain, where Covey experiences more tragedy. Byron and Benny learn the sacrifices, hardships, and sorrow their mother endured, while finding out more about themselves and their identities. VERDICT Already picked up by Oprah's Harpo Films, Wilkerson's novel jumps between Covey's life and Byron's and Benny's in the current day. This engrossing read is highly recommended.—Brooke Bolton
APRIL 2022 - AudioFile
A complex family story simmers in this audiobook. Lynnette Freeman and Simone Mcintyre narrate with appropriate energy, wielding rich, precise voices with aplomb. After the recent death of their mother, Benny and Byron are presented with a recording that promises to illuminate family secrets. Once this frame story is established, the narrative breaks into various accounts of the family’s origins, which are emotionally delivered but often challenging to follow in the audio format. The anecdotes are well told—they move briskly, and the narrators are invested in them. But each shift in timeframe or character requires the listener to readjust. While the strengths of Freeman and Mcintyre are evident in both exposition and dialogue, the listener would benefit from the ability to flip back through the pages of a print edition. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-01-26
Siblings called together after their mother's death learn that almost everything they know about their Caribbean-born parents is a lie.
On an unnamed island in 1965, a bride throws herself into the ocean after her much older gangster husband drops dead at their wedding reception and is never again seen in her village. (She is, however, a very good swimmer.) In Southern California in 2018, Byron and his sister, Benny, are called to listen to an audio file their mother spent days making for them. Estranged for years, they resist, asking for a copy to take home, but their mother's lawyer (who also seems to be grieving) says their mother was very specific, telling them, "There are things your mother wanted you to hear right away, things you need to know." Are there ever. The threads connecting the alternating sections of the book, "Then" and "Now," are many, and tangled, and somehow just keep getting more complicated as the pages roll by. The complex plotting of this novel, unfurling over decades and continents, and the careful pacing of its reveals, often in very short, almost epigrammatic chapters, are enticing. But the pacing is overly slowed by endless lingering inside the heads of characters recapping, reviewing, and agonizing over their predicaments. You want to be tapping your toe with suspense, not fraying patience. And while the island-born characters introduced in the "Then" part of the book are deliciously larger than life, with outsized talents, shortcomings, and powers of self-reinvention, the backstories and concerns of the "Now" characters feel consciously assembled to touch bases of gender and racial identity, domestic abuse, political consciousness, climate change, etc. Nonetheless, Wilkerson is clearly an author to watch.
There is plenty to savor in this ambitious and accomplished debut.