Joan Aiken has written with her usual ebullient wit a book that is as frothy and easily digestible as one of its heroine’s very best soufflés
- Nina Bawden, Telegraph
The gifted prolific British author tells another mesmerizing story with the characteristically ‘different’ Aiken touches
Publisher’s Weekly
Aiken holds the reader’s attention from start to finish – an action-packed tale told reflectively, intelligently, and at times movingly
Sunday Telegraph
Clytie Churchill, cooker up of banquets and cookbooks, has the richest hoard of incident-and accident prone relations . . . her menus sound super but her adventures are all heartburn. In fact in her own words to her publisher about an old manuscript – ‘Foul Matter. Who needs it?’
The Observer
This is not a sad book, it is written with all the author’s accustomed sizzling wit . . . Clytie is truthful and inquiring, and determined to have a good time – and you will too when you read her story
West Sussex Gazette
I have been on nodding terms with death since age nineteen. Death holds precious little mystery for me. During the last sixteen years I have eaten death for breakfast . . .
For accomplished writer and chef Clytie Churchill suffering and love come hand in hand. The life of each person she loves seems to come to a desperate end – sickness, suicide, death by drowning, orphan and widower Clytie has grieved through it all. During a long night reminiscing in a remote French Chateau she resolves to throw out all this Foul Matter – like the old proofs of a finished book.
But there is still one mystery to solve – when she learns there is a chance that little Finn, her dead husband’s son, could have survived the sinking of his father’s boat Clytie seeks out lawyer and ex-lover Anthony to help her track him down.
Awardwinning author Joan Aiken touches upon love and death with a thoughtfulness and courage that makes Foul Matter a romantic suspense novel like no other.