3 out of 4 stars
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Tara Botel Doherty’s novel, Bread for the Table, spends a day with protagonist Sage and considers the way her past has shaped her present; her mother left her at the age of five, shortly after her sister Rose of Sharon’s death. As Sage stirred a pot of soup, her mother told her to keep stirring since she was going to the shop “to get bread for the table” but never came back. It was left to Sage’s oblivious father whose only interest was reading John Steinbeck novels and his formidable mother to raise her.
Twenty-five years after this abandonment, Sage, now working as a waitress, receives a postcard from her mother. Sage thinks it over during her day at work, and dwells on her life up to that point in a series of flashbacks. We learn that she still lives in the same Los Angeles neighbourhood she grew up in; she had inherited her grandmother’s house, which she now shares with Tomas, her boyfriend of five years. Sage is a trained jewellery designer but is a waitress by circumstance, although she is unmotivated to reclaim her creativity, in part because of Tomas, who belittled her craft severely enough for her to take his opinion to heart. He demeans and stifles her in many ways. Sage has allowed herself to stagnate in response to her dysfunctional upbringing and abusive boyfriend and lost much of her will and vitality until she allows her long-lost mother back in her life.
Bread for the Table was a wonderful surprise to me. Doherty’s imagery hooked me within the first lines, and I then stayed with Sage as I can empathise with her state of ennui. Her flashbacks tell her story; although the reader spends a day with Sage, it feels as though her whole life passes through her mind within that time. Perceptive insights about human nature and the vicissitudes of life abound in this character’s story – though it is a simple story, the author tells it wisely and beautifully. Doherty’s choice of symbolism links Sage’s childhood impressions with her current way of seeing, and in particular the associations she has of pink lotuses and lipstick of that same colour. Doherty has a gift for setting mood and creating a tone that lingers in the mind after reading her work. Overall, this is an absorbing novel, which I read start to finish in three hours.
There were some editing irregularities, but they didn’t distract me from the story. These were noticeable but not too much of a problem. The format of the dialogue was run-on, and I couldn’t tell if that was intentional. Nevertheless, it was clear which character did the speaking once I familiarised myself with the novel’s particulars. The author included study guide questions about Bread for the Table at the end of the book; I enjoyed this, and I think that readers who like to analyse their literature might find the questions welcome, too. Steinbeck’s literature is an important feature of Sage’s life, therefore Doherty had Sage and her father read passages from the novelist’s works, and those tracts fit seamlessly into Bread for the Table and were relevant to Sage’s thoughts and moods.
Since I noticed the editing needed some more work, I’ll rate Bread for the Table 3 out of 4 stars. Otherwise, I would certainly have given it a full rating. The specific readerships I would recommend this novel to would be those who seek out excellent literary and women’s fiction.
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Bread for the Table
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