Synopsis: |
Drawing on the real story of Peggy Guggenheim's sojourn in rural Sussex between the two World Wars, "The Good Plain Cook", which was a BBC Radio 4 "Book at Bedtime" in 2008, is a story of idealistic dilettante Communists and the ordinary working folk who they encounter. It is a deeply affecting human story written with a lightly comic touch. It's summer 1936, and the world is on the cusp of change, but there's little sign of this in rural Sussex. So when local girl Kitty Allen answers an advert looking for 'a good plain cook', she has no idea what she's in for. For starters, her employer is an American called Ellen Steinberg who believes in calling the staff by their first names and sunbathing in the nude. Then there's Ellen's eleven-year-old daughter, Geenie, a bright, unhappy little thing, and Mrs Steinberg's gentleman friend, Mr Crane, who's said to be a poet - even though he doesn't have a beard and doesn't seem to write much poetry either. Utterly out of her depth, she is relieved to have the gardener, Arthur, to talk to. Otherwise she'd never last a summer in this madhouse.Ellen Steinberg wants life to run as smoothly as the love story she imagines her lover George Crane to be writing. But as Kitty arrives, the dream is on the edge of falling apart. This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the author's work and as low as 30 per cent with characters and plotlines removed. |