Cecile Levin

A Piece of Cake Cecile Levin

Are you a squirrel? This lively fictionalised memoir could be for you! Declutter! Downsize! For Alison, a hoarder par excellence, and an acknowledged procrastinator who hates change, it's all too much! After forty years of happy marriage - well, so she'd thought - Alison's husband has abandoned her for a woman barely older than their daughters, and Alison is left to sell their home - and jettison many of her possessions. As she decides on the fate of family treasures or mere memorabilia or just plain rubbish - into the In- or Out-box - Alison remembers life as a schoolgirl in Pietermaritzburg in the 1950s, as a student and teacher in Cape Town, and as a wife, mother and grandmother in Durban in the twenty-first century. When the sorting and packing gets too much for her, Alison's thoughts wander... Alison's bossy older sister directs proceedings telephonically from Maritzburg; her good friends advise her in Durban, and, from the couch, Joey, her eccentric cat, makes wry comments on Alison's progress - or lack thereof. Frequent tea and coffee breaks, with delicacies from the home industry bakery, friends or her own kitchen, sustain Alison during this difficult time... In the end the job somehow gets done. A piece of cake! A lightly humorous and unusual book which will resonate with many, recall old memories for some, and bring delight to all.