Stuck Up a Tree

by JennyMcLeod (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $9.92

  Ella Brightwell is heading for trouble. Successful caterer to the chattering classes, thoroughly selfish, living very comfortably, she gets news of the death of the mother she hasn't seen for 10 years. She thinks she can just nip up the motorway to Nottingham for the funeral and return to her London life unscathed. But Ella has reckoned without her large Jamaican family. Even as she enters her home town in her smart little car, she begins to feel ambushed and when she enters her mother's kitchen she is overwhelmed by the secrets and memories which lie in wait for her in her old home. Though her mother's body lies in an open coffin in the sitting-room, she is everywhere Ella looks. And there too is the huge, locked spice cupboard that had tantalised her and her brothers and sisters as youngsters. Everyone is changed, and yet, really nothing has changed at all. In this bittersweet, rites-of-passage novel, rich with Jamaican food and traditions, Ella is forced to see that reinventing yourself is one thing, but meeting your past is quite another.

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.49