By Bread Alone

Sarah-Kate Lynch

Random House

Otago Daily Times, 2003

Since biblical times, the making and breaking of bread has occupied a place of great significance in the human psyche-nourishment for both body and soul.  For Esme, the main character in Sarah-Kate Lynch’s latest novel By Bread Alone, bread also links her back to a small French Boulangerie.  Here she met Louis, her first lover and the man who taught her to make pain au levin, the sourdough, she has baked daily ever since. Fifteen years, 6 boyfriends, a husband, and 10 pounds later, her life is more complicated and painful.  As she struggles to come to terms with a series of tragedies, these memories become increasingly alluring, and much easier to contemplate than the grief she is trying to bury. Then Louis suddenly reappears…

Esme is a compelling character and her eccentric household (including an unapproachable father-in-law, evil goat, gimpy-legged donkey and vicious bees) provide some wonderfully comic moments.  The story also touches on deeper questions, such as the wisdom of trying to escape the present by recapturing the past, but lightly enough that it avoids getting bogged down.  Pog, Esme’s husband, does seem too good to be true, and at times the analogy between bread and sex becomes strained (“She was ready to rise.  All that was missing was the baker’s magic touch”), but it is an entertaining read.  And the recipe for sourdough, painstakingly researched by Lynch herself, makes it well worth the exercise.