The Sugar Queen is a Sweet Treat

The Sugar Queen

Sarah Addison Allen

(Bantam Trade Paperback, 2009)

 

 

 

I was introduced to author Sarah Addison Allen when I found this book in a box of books in my mother’s basement, put there for anyone in the family to take.  I was surprised when I later opened the book to find that I had given the book to my mother, which she duly noted along with the fact that she had read it.  I was looking for light fiction when I started to read the book, but didn’t dream I would grow to love this author and her “Southern Magical Realism.”  It goes down easy.  The veil between reality and the supernatural shifts back and forth as if blown by a summer breeze.

This book was read as part of the Once Upon a Time reading challenge.  See prior post for more information.  You will note I didn't read what I had intended to read because I got fixated on Sarah Addison Allen's books!

Josey Cirrini is controlled by her wealthy, domineering, self-centered, and bitter mother, Margaret, though Josey’s situation begins to change when she discovers a strange woman hiding in her closet.  Della Lee Baker, a beautiful woman from Josey’s hometown, has a bad reputation and a self-destructive streak, so Josey surprises herself when she decides to let Della Lee stay in her closet for a while. Della Lee is there to help Josey live a real life, instead of remaining under her mother’s domination.  Josey, in turn, helps Della Lee find closure to situations in her life.

Allen’s books are sensory treats.  She evokes scents and sights to set the tone for her books, each set in a fictitious North Carolina location.  This genre will not be for everyone, but I love her descriptions, e.g. “feathery frost on the windowpane,” the locales and the characters.  

The characters often have immutable characteristics shared by everyone in their family.  The men in the Pelham family can’t break a promise once it’s given.  Other characters are associated with specific scents and powers, e.g. Josey Cirrini, the main character, smells like peppermint. 

“[Julian] smelled of alcohol and of something else, like if you took a match to a rosebush.”  He is the charismatic evil seducer: “He was beautiful, like he’s been carefully drawn with a charcoal pencil, every line perfect, every smudge delivered.” “Julian was sitting with Chloe, surrounding them both with in a cloud of rosy-black smoke that only the women in the bar could see….Chloe was stuck in his smoke, entranced by him.  She couldn’t get out alone.”

Beside Julian, Margaret Cirrini is one of the more villainous characters but eventually the reader develops some empathy for her, and she becomes a more sympathetic character.  Rawley Pelham, the local taxi company owner, has a secret that binds him to the Cirrini family.  Adam Boswell, the Carrini’s mail carrier and the object of Josey’s unrequited love, has his own hidden past.  Café owner Chloe Finley and her estranged boyfriend Jake Yardley are torn apart by a betrayal and a secret.  Every character has unrealized hopes and dreams and secrets--secrets that must be disclosed before individuals can achieve happiness.   

Chloe has a strange relationship with books.  They appear unbidden to her and always have a message for her if she would heed them.  When Chloe seeks to buy a house, the homeowner says:

Books can be possessive, can’t they?  You’re walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention.  Sometimes what’s inside will change will life, but sometimes you don’t even have to read it.  Sometimes it’s a comfort just to have a book around.  Many of these books [in this library] haven’t even had their spines cracked.  ‘Why do you books you don’t even read?’ our daughter asks us.  That’s like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat.  For company, of course….

 I would love this book, if for no other reason than this passage!

While each of Sarah Addison Allen’s books contains dark forces that threaten the well-being of the characters, these are dispelled by the end of the novel.  Remember, this is “magical realism.”