(courtesy Hachette Australia)
As someone who grew up incredibly socially isolated thanks to incessant bullying from the first day of school until almost the last, this reviewer appreciates a story in which something similarly cut out of the mainstream finds their way into a place of belonging and the unconditional love and support that often comes with it.
It’s likely why The Gingerbread Café by Anita Faulkner, a reasonably cookie cutter but nicely executed festive novel, really struck a chord, centred as it is around someone who has never really fit in the crowd and who has found herself through a series of personal tragedies living in a strangely Christmassy world of her own making.
Introverted Gretel lives in a small English village that seems to have sprung forth straight from central casting; it has a street of independent ships, Green Tree Lane, a cast of idiosyncratic villagers who are in close proximity but who don’t really know each other, and a general sense of life shrunk down to just the right comforting size.
It could be somewhere where everybody knows your name and life is lived in close contact with a collection of caring people who likely know too much about you but in just the right way, but it is in decline and no one, most notably Gretel, knows anyone and really has no desire to remedy the situation, content to stay in her tiny apartment with her mischievous ferret, the Angel Gabriel, and a plastic Christmas tree which is always decorated.
They were silent for a moment, Gretel conscious she hadn’t been able to face the emotion of Nell’s annual real tree ritual this year. Maybe in January, and she didn’t care if most people would find that odd. Thinking of odd, there was something else she needed to raise with Lukas. As she looked down onto Green Tree Lane and the tree she hoped would always be twinkling, she felt a small burst of courage.
Her only meaningful point of social content is The Gingerbread Café, a shop in town run by Gretel’s surrogate mum, Nell, who has taken the shy, retiring young lady under her wing and kept her cosy and safe in a world where Christmas is celebrated every single day of the year.
Quirky and overdone? Maybe, but Nell and Gretel love it that way, and if fate hadn’t intervened, it’s highly likely that Gretel would have stayed in her tinsel and gingerbread bubble for the duration.
But then Nell suddenly dies, and in amongst all the grief and loss, Gretel discovers she has inherited the café, in and of itself a lovely thing except for the fact, and cue entry of the opposites attract love interest, that she must share ownership with Nell’s super-grinchy, star chef nephew Lukas who makes Scrooge look like a man made of tinsel, eggnog and jolly Ho Ho Hos in comparison.
Gretel shrinks down inside at the idea that she has to learn how to bake and manage a fractious relationship with her new co-owner, and much of the first half or so of The Gingerbread Café revolves around the two absolute opposites clashing as rom-com tropes dictate they must.
While some of these clashes are a little clunky and rote, by and large Faulkner nails the transition from enemies to not-enemies to friends and then lovers quite nicely and you delight in the way that two people flung hard by life to the emotional outer suddenly finds themselves getting far closer to another human being than they ever expected.
(courtesy official Anita Faulkner Facebook page)
As Gretel and Lukas are putting aside their differences and finding a home with each other, the village itself starts cracking wide open.
While Gretel is a reluctant café owner at first, she soon warms to the idea of being a retail hub in the village, and when the cute look and feel of the village is threatened by rapacious landlords who want profits at the expense of atmosphere and livability, she coopts the rest of the shop owners to join together to reinvigorate Green Tree Land and restore life, not just to the village, but to its socially isolated inhabitants too.
It’s a classic found family tale that unfolds and while it’s all a little bit too good to be true, the truth is that we love these kinds of stories because they defy the modern idea that we are doomed to be just a little alone as the world hurtle frantically by around us.
There’s a lot coming against everyone in the village but as Oliver, Phoebe, Amber, Jane & Jayne, Eve, Zekia & Gordon and of course Gretel, and yes, even Lukas, find commonality and a robustly heartfelt sense of family with each other, The Gingerbread Café comes happily with the sense that this too shall pass, and when it does, they will be standing, in lockstep with each other and as supportive and mutually caring as always.
When he looked at her, that cheeky glint was back in his eyes. Who was she to refuse?
It’s this sense that a closeknit community can defy and beat almost anything that makes The Gingerbread Café such a soul nurturing and wholly delightful read.
While many of us are strong enough to battle the world alone if we have to, and sometimes we don’t have much choice but to do that, not having to wage the war all by themselves is such a wonderful relief.
Certainly that’s how Gretel finds it, and while she has managed to get through life by herself relatively intact though very lonely into the bargain, she comes alive and finds new purpose when she has a new found family around her, and discovers how rich and wonderful it can be to be unconditionally loved and supported.
Watching Gretel grow into her new place as part of something rather than a lone heavily-tinseled wolf is a real joy, and the fact that much, though not all of this growth takes places around Christmastime, which takes on a whole new shape and flavour as she blossoms and grows, is really just the festive icing on the cake.
Christmas novels like The Gingerbread Café are supposed to make the world feel shiny, new and possible, and Faulkner’s novel absolutely delivers on that front, giving us a protagonist who needs love of the romantic and found familial kinds, a community of people who change their small village and by extension how they see the world around them, and love of the most rom-comy kind, all wrapped in a bright Christmas bow and all the loveliness and transformative wonder of the season.