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Miss Alice Merriwether's Long Lost Cakes & Further Arcane Inducements to Wonder
One Sunday evening, the town of Parcival, USA disappeared. It was Tuesday morning before anyone in the outside world noticed it was gone. There was something decidedly odd about Quentin C. Coriander. For one thing, no one in Parcival could ever remember seeing him arrive. One day the house was empty, bare as winter trees. Next, there was Quentin on the porch, reading the Parcival Post or doing the crossword. From then on it was usual for townsfolk to nod at Quentin as they passed and to receive a cursory nod in return. It never evolved beyond that. Quentin never encourage conversation. No one in Parcival much bothered to keep an eye on Quentin. What they didn't know was that he always had his eye on them... Miss Alice Merriwether's Long Lost Cakes is a transdimensional science-fiction satire that riffs on 1950s B-movies, Midwestern stereotypes, and small-town America. Cover design: Elspeth Fahey.
- GenresFictionScience Fiction
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 12, 2011
SYNOPSIS:
> One Sunday evening, the town of Parcival, USA disappeared. It was Tuesday morning before anyone in the outside world noticed it was gone.
> Quentin C. Coriander, new to Parcival, was a mystery. No one in Parcival much bothered to keep an eye on Quentin. What they didn’t know was that he always had his eye on them…
> Miss Alice Merriwether’s Long Lost Cakes is a transdimensional science-fiction satire that riffs on 1950s B-movies, Midwestern stereotypes, and small-town America. Cover design: Elspeth Fahey.
Literature has regained a lost luminary, October 7, 2009
By Carol Kean
Okay, we haven’t regained Douglas Adams, but Barry Aitchison’s wit, humor and insight remind us that lights still shine in the world of books. In addition to helping us laugh at ourselves, Aitchison celebrates something I particularly like about humans — our ability to adapt and survive.
“Miss Alice Merriwether’s Long Lost Cakes” made me read passages aloud, laughing, to whoever would listen. The back cover sold me: One Sunday evening a town went missing, and it was Tuesday morning before anyone actually noticed it was gone. I loved reading how the townsfolk reacted to their plight–it’s as funny as the back cover promised.
But there’s more to the story than satire and humor. I admired these “hicks” for their enterprising and stoic spirit. How the people pull together, organize and plan for the future is a great story by itself. Above all, it’s a testament to the American frontier spirit. In the face of unthinkable events, the people waste no time on existential thoughts about their fate; they forge ahead. They argue, but they always *act.* Say what you will about American insularity or our relentless optimism, but this reader was rooting for Parcival.
I love every character in the book. I especially love/hate Miss Alice, the title character. Barry, thank you for including her recipes to tantalize the reader. I had to applaud Alice for thinking her culinary genius is as much a gift to humanity as art, music and literature. She may be delusional, but her cakes have a power to entice that she herself lacks. Her efforts with eligible bachelors are hilarious, but the havoc she can create with cake is almost the motive force of the plot. Her cake baking may not cause to Parcival to fall right off the map, but when the town stranger and the sheriff realize they cannot both be recipients of Miss Alice’s cakes, I laughed until the thought “men are really like this” came to mind.
Okay, my dad “really is like that,” but not my husband, because we Midwesterners are not all “like that.” Admittedly, I saw my dad all over Parcival, much as I wanted to insist that we Midwesterners are not as unthinking as Aitchison might portray us. E.g., before I could protest the line “Mensa doesn’t trawl too hard for members in small Midwest towns,” I counted far more people in the poke at our insularity: “After all, what is the point of knowing that the world is round and that Europe is not just another state of the USA? What good does it do knowing that there are cultures around the world that can compete with the Midwest intellectually? Midwesterners are nothing if not practical.”
While such comments are obvious exaggerations for the sake of humor, there’s truth in them. Go ahead. Laugh.
I love “The Small Town Musings of Russel Cowes” and the reasons he offers for the “permanently stunned look” that causes Midwesterners to appear stupid. Settlers of the Great Plains “endured the worst weather nature can whip up,” such as the blizzard of 1888 (true story, lurid details), 40-below-zero winters, hot, arid summers, prairie fires, grasshopper plagues, dust storms, floods and tornadoes. “Wouldn’t all that be enough to make your face look like you were expecting the next disaster to come along any minute?” Other writers have lauded the hardiness and stoicism of Midwesterners who descended from this stock, and here, I think, Aitchison’s humor affirms rather than demeans.
Narrated from multiple viewpoints, this story evokes the humanity of Stephen King’s “The Stand,” while the adroit, satiric wit brings to mind Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” It stands alone as a marvelous debut novel. Each character is so memorable, I never struggled to keep track of who’s who. The teenagers are so funny, and Karen (Karen! Karen! Karen!) would make a fine “founding father” (well, mother) of a new town. Let’s just hope Miss Alice never runs out of cake flour.
Australian author Barry Aitchison was a loyal member of the Internet Writing Workshop. His wit and humor kept us on our toes, challenged and entertained, sometimes offended, never bored. He’s the first workshop member I know of to just…die…on us. A long silence is not unusual for a writer, but one devoted member did some research and learned he had died. (Next we lost Cyrus Gillingham of Ohio, and the list will go on.) NOTE: I have not been active in this writing workshop since 2012. I have lost track of everyone except when we cross paths occasionally on Twitter or Facebook.
> One Sunday evening, the town of Parcival, USA disappeared. It was Tuesday morning before anyone in the outside world noticed it was gone.
> Quentin C. Coriander, new to Parcival, was a mystery. No one in Parcival much bothered to keep an eye on Quentin. What they didn’t know was that he always had his eye on them…
> Miss Alice Merriwether’s Long Lost Cakes is a transdimensional science-fiction satire that riffs on 1950s B-movies, Midwestern stereotypes, and small-town America. Cover design: Elspeth Fahey.
Literature has regained a lost luminary, October 7, 2009
By Carol Kean
Okay, we haven’t regained Douglas Adams, but Barry Aitchison’s wit, humor and insight remind us that lights still shine in the world of books. In addition to helping us laugh at ourselves, Aitchison celebrates something I particularly like about humans — our ability to adapt and survive.
“Miss Alice Merriwether’s Long Lost Cakes” made me read passages aloud, laughing, to whoever would listen. The back cover sold me: One Sunday evening a town went missing, and it was Tuesday morning before anyone actually noticed it was gone. I loved reading how the townsfolk reacted to their plight–it’s as funny as the back cover promised.
But there’s more to the story than satire and humor. I admired these “hicks” for their enterprising and stoic spirit. How the people pull together, organize and plan for the future is a great story by itself. Above all, it’s a testament to the American frontier spirit. In the face of unthinkable events, the people waste no time on existential thoughts about their fate; they forge ahead. They argue, but they always *act.* Say what you will about American insularity or our relentless optimism, but this reader was rooting for Parcival.
I love every character in the book. I especially love/hate Miss Alice, the title character. Barry, thank you for including her recipes to tantalize the reader. I had to applaud Alice for thinking her culinary genius is as much a gift to humanity as art, music and literature. She may be delusional, but her cakes have a power to entice that she herself lacks. Her efforts with eligible bachelors are hilarious, but the havoc she can create with cake is almost the motive force of the plot. Her cake baking may not cause to Parcival to fall right off the map, but when the town stranger and the sheriff realize they cannot both be recipients of Miss Alice’s cakes, I laughed until the thought “men are really like this” came to mind.
Okay, my dad “really is like that,” but not my husband, because we Midwesterners are not all “like that.” Admittedly, I saw my dad all over Parcival, much as I wanted to insist that we Midwesterners are not as unthinking as Aitchison might portray us. E.g., before I could protest the line “Mensa doesn’t trawl too hard for members in small Midwest towns,” I counted far more people in the poke at our insularity: “After all, what is the point of knowing that the world is round and that Europe is not just another state of the USA? What good does it do knowing that there are cultures around the world that can compete with the Midwest intellectually? Midwesterners are nothing if not practical.”
While such comments are obvious exaggerations for the sake of humor, there’s truth in them. Go ahead. Laugh.
I love “The Small Town Musings of Russel Cowes” and the reasons he offers for the “permanently stunned look” that causes Midwesterners to appear stupid. Settlers of the Great Plains “endured the worst weather nature can whip up,” such as the blizzard of 1888 (true story, lurid details), 40-below-zero winters, hot, arid summers, prairie fires, grasshopper plagues, dust storms, floods and tornadoes. “Wouldn’t all that be enough to make your face look like you were expecting the next disaster to come along any minute?” Other writers have lauded the hardiness and stoicism of Midwesterners who descended from this stock, and here, I think, Aitchison’s humor affirms rather than demeans.
Narrated from multiple viewpoints, this story evokes the humanity of Stephen King’s “The Stand,” while the adroit, satiric wit brings to mind Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” It stands alone as a marvelous debut novel. Each character is so memorable, I never struggled to keep track of who’s who. The teenagers are so funny, and Karen (Karen! Karen! Karen!) would make a fine “founding father” (well, mother) of a new town. Let’s just hope Miss Alice never runs out of cake flour.
Australian author Barry Aitchison was a loyal member of the Internet Writing Workshop. His wit and humor kept us on our toes, challenged and entertained, sometimes offended, never bored. He’s the first workshop member I know of to just…die…on us. A long silence is not unusual for a writer, but one devoted member did some research and learned he had died. (Next we lost Cyrus Gillingham of Ohio, and the list will go on.) NOTE: I have not been active in this writing workshop since 2012. I have lost track of everyone except when we cross paths occasionally on Twitter or Facebook.
October 18, 2009
I absolutely loved this book!
Miss Alice Merriwther’s Long Lost Cakes & Further Inducements to Wonder tells the story about the small, midwestern town of Parcival in which everything is uprooted when the town disappears from the United States and is relocated to somewhere else in the galaxy. What is so wonderful about this book are Aitchison’s characters, and how oblivious they are to what is going on around them. The characters in many ways continue on their normal lives, despite the fact that they are so obviously not on earth any longer and are surrounded by a large dome that they can’t escape.
Despite its premise, I wouldn’t really classify this book as Science Fiction. It is more of a satire, commenting on the quirkiness of people and towns in the Midwest. Aitchison does this very well, and many times I laughed at his insightful observations in the life of the people of Parcival, while at the same time realizing that I know people who are just like this. He comments on the naiveté of the townsfolk, their obvious gravitation to tradition and habits, and their paranoia, both of outsiders and of change. I also find it incredibly humorous that the townspeople want to blame the government, the terrorists, and the democrats for everything that is happening to them. While this is humorous, I feel as though it is a true representation of the quirkiness of small town people in Midwestern America.
The characters also make this novel what it is. It’s impossible not to laugh out loud while reading this. At first, it does get a bit confusing because there are so many characters, but despite the brevity of this book I feel like I know these people, partly because they seem like they’re based on people in real life who I’ve interacted with many times. For example, you have the ditzy cheerleaders who are out to get one another in the race for homecoming queen. You have the town stoner, and the spinster who spends her entire life baking cakes in the hopes that it will win over someone’s hand in marriage. You have the born town leader, the ignorant people who want to lynch whoever’s to blame for the town’s circumstance, and the crazy sheriff who is constantly power tripping despite the fact that he’s never really had to fight real crime a day in his life. The characters and their idiosyncrasies are what drive this story, not necessarily their circumstance, although their reactions in the face of adversity were truly both insightful and hilarious at the same time.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone. This is surely a short, but sweet, novel.
Miss Alice Merriwther’s Long Lost Cakes & Further Inducements to Wonder tells the story about the small, midwestern town of Parcival in which everything is uprooted when the town disappears from the United States and is relocated to somewhere else in the galaxy. What is so wonderful about this book are Aitchison’s characters, and how oblivious they are to what is going on around them. The characters in many ways continue on their normal lives, despite the fact that they are so obviously not on earth any longer and are surrounded by a large dome that they can’t escape.
Despite its premise, I wouldn’t really classify this book as Science Fiction. It is more of a satire, commenting on the quirkiness of people and towns in the Midwest. Aitchison does this very well, and many times I laughed at his insightful observations in the life of the people of Parcival, while at the same time realizing that I know people who are just like this. He comments on the naiveté of the townsfolk, their obvious gravitation to tradition and habits, and their paranoia, both of outsiders and of change. I also find it incredibly humorous that the townspeople want to blame the government, the terrorists, and the democrats for everything that is happening to them. While this is humorous, I feel as though it is a true representation of the quirkiness of small town people in Midwestern America.
The characters also make this novel what it is. It’s impossible not to laugh out loud while reading this. At first, it does get a bit confusing because there are so many characters, but despite the brevity of this book I feel like I know these people, partly because they seem like they’re based on people in real life who I’ve interacted with many times. For example, you have the ditzy cheerleaders who are out to get one another in the race for homecoming queen. You have the town stoner, and the spinster who spends her entire life baking cakes in the hopes that it will win over someone’s hand in marriage. You have the born town leader, the ignorant people who want to lynch whoever’s to blame for the town’s circumstance, and the crazy sheriff who is constantly power tripping despite the fact that he’s never really had to fight real crime a day in his life. The characters and their idiosyncrasies are what drive this story, not necessarily their circumstance, although their reactions in the face of adversity were truly both insightful and hilarious at the same time.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone. This is surely a short, but sweet, novel.
October 22, 2009
Cool little cross of Ray Bradberry and Sherwood Anderson. I REALLY liked this book a lot.
August 12, 2017
Interesting book, very different from the standard fare for this particular type of story (scifi story where town is transported to an alien world). There's a lot of characters, which can be hard to keep track of, but they do a good job of establishing the tone of the story.
September 9, 2010
My dear Australian friend, Barry Aitchison, wrote this book. Since I'd been critiquing a lot of his fiction in our online newsgroup, I wasn't sure what to expect from his full-length novel. Man, I never should've wondered! This book rocked it from the first sentence, and I'm not just saying that because he paid me. The title alone should be clue enough that Barry's tongue was firmly planted in his cheek the entire time. His story requires that we suspend our disbelief for a brief time as we enter his small American town, and watch the residents react as they face something they can neither fix, nor explain. Fox had wanted to option this as a movie before the deal fell through. Highly recommend!
June 3, 2011
Crazy, silly story that somehow Aitchison mixes together brilliantly. He cooks up a story that is completely unbelievable, but at the same time, each step along the way is realistic and one could imagine that modern day society WOULD actually do these crazy things, or act this way.
Of course, ending a book is a very difficult thing to do, and often I am disappointed with an ending, and I was with this book, too. But how to end such a prepostrous, fun story than with a godly metaphor, heavenly hints, and an abrupt halt to all the silliness.
Quick read that is fun, if you need a break from "heavy" reading.
Of course, ending a book is a very difficult thing to do, and often I am disappointed with an ending, and I was with this book, too. But how to end such a prepostrous, fun story than with a godly metaphor, heavenly hints, and an abrupt halt to all the silliness.
Quick read that is fun, if you need a break from "heavy" reading.
September 10, 2008
This was the most difficult 217 pages I have trudged through in quite a while. It gets an extra star for sporting an intriguing title, and for one Hitchhiker's Guidish/Flukish footnote on the next to last page.
June 9, 2009
Cool story about a small town being trapped under a dome, predating Stephen King’s book Under the Dome by several years. Charming and witty.
June 23, 2011
Odd, very strange book. The plot is cute, but it is just such a strange book. I can identify the merit why others enjoy the book. But, my literary taste doesn't fall in line with the strange humor Mr. Aitchison laid out in this book.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews