Cover the Butter [Hardcover]

Carrie Kabak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 16, 2005

Get ready to cheer for Kate Cadogan, a forty-something woman who has spent her life trying to please her husband, her son, her mother and her father without a moment’s thought to her own needs. Until one day when a series of events causes her to slip back in time…

For the first time Kate sees her life clearly—her dreams of becoming a caterer; the delicate yet combustible relationship she shares with her mother; and the unflagging support of her two best friends.

Kate finds the courage to make a break and energized by her newfound freedom, she creates a life all her own.

Buoyant and deeply moving, Cover the Butter proves that starting over has nothing to do with age and everything to do with spirit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kabak's debut, set in Wales, covers familiar familial territory. When 40-something Kate Cadogan arrives home to find her house trashed by her teenage son, Charlie, she succumbs to a long overdue need to take stock of her desperate housewife life. We revisit Kate from her 1970s teenhood forward: her mother Biddy's cold and obtrusive "controlling passion" rules the family roost and dictates everything from Kate's clothes to her intended career, while her father is devoted but feckless. Kate is buoyed by a cast of sympathetic and supportive characters: her diehard friends Ingrid and Moira, her sweet and knowing grandparents Magmu and Griff and her aunt Oona, a kindred spirit. After a disastrous but passionate relationship, Kate meets businessman Rodney Fanshaw. All is well, but "Rodders" ignores her wish to work, is even more inconsiderate in bed and spends more time at sport than at home, leaving Kate lonely. Dejected and depressed, Kate pours herself into house and child until the moment in the prologue when she breaks down. The dialogue is chick-lit generic but exact; scenes play out fluidly and are nicely detailed, particularly in Kate's sophisticated foodyism. Kabak doesn't provide the frisson of the racy TV mockudrama, but she does tell Kate's story with warmth and humor.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Kate Cadogan returns home from vacation to find her home utterly trashed from a party thrown by her rebellious teenage son. When both the son and Kate's husband are completely indifferent to the carnage, she realizes that her life needs to change. Flash back to her adolescence in a small town in 1960s England, where she and her Catholic school chums daydream about clothes, independence, and boys, boys, boys. Her critical, controlling mother is fanatically opposed to teenage dating, yet Kate manages to sneak around, which leads to the scandal of sex before marriage. A failed relationship and unplanned pregnancy throw Kate into the arms of her current husband, Rodney. The sports-obsessed businessman isn't exactly Kate's dream man, but her mother approves, and Kate longs for the security of marriage. Flash forward to Kate's lackluster 20-year marriage to Rodney and his increasingly maddening, single-minded pursuit of "crickethockeygolforsquash." Her dilemma spreads before her in the ravages of her ruined home. This is charming, compassionate look at how one woman discovers that self-fulfillment shouldn't be postponed forever. Misha Stone
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (June 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525948767
• ISBN-13: 978-0525948766
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,396,171 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carrie Kabak is author of Cover the Butter (Penguin Putnam), an Independent Booksellers Pick, and her essays have appeared in For Keeps and He Said What? (Seal Press), and Exit Laughing (North Atlantic Books). Her second novel, Deviled Egg, is in progress. Carrie is a professional editor and copywriter for two affiliate companies of Amazon.com, and a partner in a specialty food business based in New York. As a graphic designer, she has received commendation as an illustrator by Writer's Digest, was named Artist of the Month by the Society of Children's Writers and Artists, and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer (Da Vinci Eye) Award for superior cover design. Born and raised in the UK of Irish and Welsh parentage, Carrie now lives in Missouri with her husband. They share five sons, two labradors, two cats, and two birds. Visit the author's websites at: www.carriekabak.com and www.carriekabak.com/graphics

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lament of the Middle-Aged Woman, August 7, 2005

By 

Antoinette Klein (Hoover, Alabama USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cover the Butter (Hardcover)

If you're a middle-aged woman whose life has not turned out as you'd hoped, if your husband bores you, if your non-career is not appreciated, and most importantly, if you still have hope, this is the book for you.

Kate Cadogan is every woman, stumbling through life and trying to make the best of things. She has some pretty heavy baggage in a mother who can best be described as horrid, jealous, and vindictive, a milquetoast father who doesn't stand up to the mother for more than five minutes and can never quite commit to being on Kate's side, and a husband who just doesn't get it.

But Kate has other things on her side: an indomitable spirit; two friends who are treasures; a son she adores; and the life-long dream of a career in the domestic arts.

Will she ever be able to win her mother's approval? Or does it really matter? Can she ever have a marriage in more than name only? Or is there some way to break free? Suffice it to say that Kate's journey is not an unusual one. She encounters many common problems, yet Carrie Kabak's razor-sharp wit keeps the reader turning the pages and sticking with Kate through the ups and downs of an often troubled, often happy life.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "TOUCHING" BOOK BY A TALENTED NEW AUTHOR!, June 18, 2005

By 

Betty L. Dravis "BETTY DRAVIS, author/reviewer" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cover the Butter (Hardcover)

What an unusual title for such a "touching" book! Ms. Kabak is a terrific writer who breathes new life into her characters with every stroke of her pen (click of her computer keyboard?). Her main character, Kate, has special meaning for me because a very dear friend struggled through similar situations with the men in her life.

This author hit on a universal theme to which many women will relate, and she brings Kate's story to a satisfying conclusion with wit, charm, and a keen understanding of the frailties and strengths of the human spirit.

I highly recommend this book by this insightful new talent who has a unique gift for description. I will follow her career with interest.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I've read all year..., April 18, 2005

By 

K. Kahler "bibliophile73" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cover the Butter (Hardcover)

COVER THE BUTTER, Carrie Kabak's exquisite debut novel, examines the buoyancy of the human spirit. After finding her lovingly restored home in shambles from her teenaged son's party (a rollicking yet poignant scene that alone is worth the price of admission), Kate takes a searing look back at how her life, too, has come to be such a mess. Belittled by her domineering mother, failing to find an ally in her feckless father, Kate struggles to make her own voice heard beneath the white noise of everyone else's demands. Kabak's writing brings alive even the most prosaic objects (I defy anyone to find better descriptions of décor and food, for example) but her gifts are most evident in her rendering of human relationships. Kate's interactions with her mother, Biddy, are by turns horrifying, hilarious and heartbreaking; Kabak perfectly captures the mother-daughter dynamic, the tangled knot of loyalty and knowing when to let go. Kate's relationships with the men in her life are drawn with equal force and a keen wit-most notably the scenes with Rodney, her priggish yet sexually peculiar husband. ("His hair stuck up in tufts and I tried to find it endearing," Kabak writes. "I tried to yearn for the touch of those thin lips that bristled with a moustache the texture of coconut husk.")
Kabak's voice is so vibrant and achingly personal I felt as if I'd known her heroine for years, and her story-and ultimate redemption-stayed with me long after I turned the last page. Carrie Kabak is a brilliant new talent, and I eagerly await her next effort.