(courtesy Penguins Books Australia)
Life is full of “It seemed like a good idea at the time” moments.
We can, we believe anyway, have all the wisdom of Solomon and the insight of a god, in one crystal moment of absolute clarity and act accordingly, only to find not that far down the road that we have made a massive error in judgement.
But oh the rush that accompanies that brisk, vibrant instance of firm decision-making, a sensation so energising and impelling that it sends Clara off to Switzerland to live with a man she barely knows, based solely on their burbling chemistry on weekends away, and on the strength of a gut feeling that she’s lived a safe and unadventurous life for far too long and that she needs to take a “leap of faith”.
Quite where this brave, or foolhardy decision, depending on where she is on the bumpy chronological scale of decisions and their repercussions, takes Clara informs the entire length of vibrant festive rom-com, A Recipe for Christmas by Jo Thomas, which is a love letter to the power to rash decisions to work out okay.
Eventually anyway; at the start, maybe not so much but hey, Clara is in Switzerland with brand spanking new financier boy friend Daniel and what, intones the back cover blurb enthusiastically and warmly, “could be more perfect than Christmas in the Alps?”
‘When are you going?’
They’re talking over each other.
‘Next week!’
‘Next week?‘
They fall quiet again.
‘But you’ve only just met,’ Marianne says eventually. ‘Surely you’ll give it a bit of time before you go, do a few trips, see if you like it first.’
Likely not much since there’s festive atmosphere to burn and picture postcard vistas to enthrall the eyes and excite the soul, but as Clara discovers, what you expect will happen, and what actually come to pass, can be two wholly different things.
As she settles into her life with Daniel and turns up for her first day at a prestigious chocolate making school, Clara remains convinced that her decision to toss in her long-term, stable HR job and leave the small town in the UK she’s called home for years with BFFs, Marianne and Raquel, is the right one.
She will fall ever more in love, she will broaden her skills and horizons – she loves chocolate, especially Lindor Balls, which she crams into her mouth whenever she can – and turn her life upside down in the best of all possible ways.
But as A Recipe for Christmas progresses, that’s not quite what happens; well, to be fair, not as she envisages and it’s the leap from what she expected to what gloriously and heartwarmingly comes to be that fills the pages of this delightful festive rom-com with so much heartfelt change.
What seemed like the best decision she’d ever made come crashing down to hard, stinging reality when it turns out her chocolate-making course is a hardcore chocolate maker’s bootcamp where she is competing alongside some real talents in the industry for a golden ticket to learn from the very best.
It’s a shock to the system but not the one she expected, and A Recipe for Christmas spends its immersive narrative length with Clara trying to hard to work out if she’s up to the task.
(courtesy official author site)
Complicating things still further is the fact that, against all odds, Clara begins to become friends with aloof Swiss chocolate-making star, Gabriel Hartmann, there ostensibly to act as judge on the six course participants efforts and spur them onto greatness with the perspective provided by his skill and expertise.
But Clara is not an experienced chocolate maker and so, while the other five people in the course – Michel, Fleur, Patrice, Frédéric and Sébastien, none of whom seem to want to be friends (that changes, don’t worry, in the most heartwarming and supportive of ways) – improve in leaps and bounds from already accomplished bases, Clara flails, becoming ever more convinced that her brilliant idea to go to Switzerland on gut instinct is ad on all kinds of levels.
She’s no chocolate maker and Daniel, as it turns out, may not in fact be the man to give Clara the sort of stable family life that her broken childhood denied her.
So, best laid plans and “It seemed like a good idea at the time” collide and Clara has a decision – run forward to the future even if it’s not the one she envisaged or give up and go home and hope she can salvage something of the life she so casually cast aside?
It wouldn’t be much of a redemptive rom-com if Clara just threw in the towel but she comes close and it’s in the early part of A Recipe for Christmas where the will-she-won’t-she dynamic reigns supreme that it becomes clear that even the most well-intentioned of decisions don’t always track as planned.
Gabriel pulls out a chair for me at the table. ‘Maybe I’ll have you helping me in my workshop, being my assistant.’ He chortles.
‘And I’ll get you to help me master the art of tempering,’ I smile back.
We all know that Clara will rally and that, while things won’t work quite as her hopefully decision-making thought they might, she’ll emerge with new skills, a changed life trajectory and maybe even a vibrant new love so the changed circumstances of her life won’t be lived alone.
But Thomas writes with realness and truthfulness about how terrible it can be when our plans don’t work out and how there’s often far more than just some present hoping and dreaming at play and that we’re often driven by past needs and wants which don’t react well to present attempts to remedy them going awry.
While the festive elements aren’t absolutely in your face, and Thomas doesn’t belabour the most wonderful time of the year-ness of things, A Recipe for Christmas is vibrantly alive with the hope and possibility of the season.
With the novel counting down week-by-week to Christmas, we get a sense of how much is riding on Clara making a go of her new chocolatey ambitions and how in the midst of it all, her heart might have other ideas of who it is she will end up with and how that could change everything.
Again.
A delightful addition to anyone’s festive reading, A Recipe for Christmas does ticks all the tropes and clichés of the genre, but in a way that feels fresh and emotionally honest, and which assures her that though things may not work out as planned, that where you do land might exactly what you need.