The Twelve Little Cakes [Paperback]

Dominika Dery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2005

Equal parts testimony to the struggles of a bygone era and a love letter to a bright-eyed childhood that no outside force could dim, this is Dominika Dery's acclaimed memoir of Communist-era Czechoslovakia.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born in 1975 in Prague, the daughter of former dissidents of the failed Prague Spring in (then) Czechoslovakia, Dery has penned a memoir collecting tales from her early childhood. She lived in a village outside Prague riddled with Communist informers ever-ready to implicate her father, a sometime taxi driver, and her mother, who ghost-wrote books for the Czech Politburo, in anti-Socialist acts. Dery's maternal grandmother was a powerful member of the Communist elite, her grandfather a famed surgeon; both were very wealthy by Czech standards. After the reform movement was quashed by the Soviets, Dery's mother was banished from the family. Written in an old-fashioned style mimicking the fairy tales Dery loved as a child, this account presents every event—the house flooding while under construction, Dery's rejection by her grandparents when she invites them to her Czech ballet debut, the unpleasant death of the family's St. Bernard—in a vacuum. Dery never veers from the perspective of a very young child, thus providing no context by which to judge the story of growing up in the last years of the Communist state. Still, it's a sometimes charming period piece.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In Ake: The Years of Childhood (1981), Wole Soyinka exposes the hypocrisies of colonialism in an intimate autobiography of his Nigerian youth. Czech poet and playwright Dery takes a similar approach in this spirited memoir of her childhood, beginning in 1975, on the outskirts of Prague. Demonstrating the "nonsense of the system" from a child's view, Dery recounts the cruelties of the Communist regime: her corrupt, wealthy grandparents disown her dissident parents; Dery's father has difficulty finding work; informers are constant. But Dery portrays her exuberant young self and her devoted parents with enormous affection and a contagious, sly humor as she blends political and cultural observations into stories about universal awakenings: at four years old, she's horrified when her parents kill a live carp for Christmas dinner. And as a preteen, she wonders if cleverness and talent matter less than a "nice pair of goats," Czech slang for breasts. The result is a warm, intelligent portrait of childhood and a smart, loving family who challenge a system that threatens "no money, no choice, and no chance." Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (October 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594481393
• ISBN-13: 978-1594481390
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #616,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching, sweet, and nostalgic, October 1, 2004

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Twelve Little Cakes (Hardcover)

The first thing we learn about Dominika Dery is that she appeared to her mother in a dream before she was born. It was in a garden and she came running through the trees to say hello. As soon as her mother, Jana, began trying to have a baby, the girl disappeared from her dreams. When finally Jana became pregnant, she and her husband Jarda were joyful. Although they did not have a lot of money for a second child, Dominika was welcomed and had a loving childhood.

Growing up in Prague in the 1970s and early 1980s, Dominika did not know her grandparents because, as members of the Party elite, they disowned her mother. She tried multiple times to meet her grandmother and grandfather, and invited them to ballet performances that she was in, but to no avail. Instead, she forged relationships with elderly members of the community.

While the family was not wealthy, Dominika enjoyed many treats in life and spending time with her parents. After seeing "Swan Lake" with her family, she was determined to become a ballerina, even though she was young and small. Throughout the reading of this memoir, you learn that Dominika was not an average little girl, and that when she set her mind to do something, she did it.

Dominika's father worked as a taxi driver because his political beliefs made it almost impossible to get another job. As a result, many of the children who were Dominika's age were not allowed to play with her. She spent hours with the older women in the neighborhood, who told her stories of their youth and baked cakes for her.

Dominika dealt with much disappointment before even completing her first decade of life. She became a dedicated and talented ballerina, but she was so small and young that it was hard to obtain roles in performances. When she did receive them, the costumes were too large or she would run into orchestra conductors who did not appreciate it when little girls sang along to the music. She began going to church and had quite a scare when she learned that, because she had taken communion at church without having been baptized, she must be baptized or she would be sent to hell.

The small town of Cernosice was full of gossips, and Dominika's parents were forever warning her not to say anything, because no one could be sure whether a neighbor was an informant or not. In one of her childhood memories captured here, she shares a time when her father outsmarted three informants by putting them to work in his backyard.

Our last glimpse into Prague's communist era is when Dominika and her parents, not accompanied by her sister, traveled to Poland for a vacation. Through hardships and disappointments, Dominika still managed to make friends, keep smiling, and put her mother and father into good spirits once again.

Dominika's good nature puts readers in good moods as well. THE TWELVE LITTLE CAKES is a touching, sweet story, and it will remind you of your childhood days, when you were as loved as you wanted to be, and anything was possible.

--- Reviewed by Hannah Gómez ([e-mail])

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE WONDER OF CHILDHOOD, November 30, 2004

By 

Brady Buchanan (Henderson, NV United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Twelve Little Cakes (Hardcover)

I would call this a gentle book harking back to childhood with loving parents who are dissidents of a strange political system named Communisim in an Eastern European country named Czechoslovakia from 1974 to about 1985. You discover that Communisim is a disastrous joke and wonder how it lasted as long as it did...and does in a few countries still. The author does a masterful job of writing about her life as it was from age 5 to 10 and conveys to the reader the innocence and excitement and concern of what is important to a young child. The big sister is in her story who adds to her troubles at times and the fact that her father is fired from many many jobs due to his resistance of the political regime, yet is able to always be optimistic and find other ways to get work has an important part also. This is a feel good book and highly recommended.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very informative and entertaining, January 1, 2006

By 

VictoryClassWoman - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Twelve Little Cakes (Hardcover)

This is an autobiographical novel that covers the author's childhood in a village outside of Prague, in what was then Czechoslovakia, in the late seventies and early eighties. The country was a Soviet bloc state, a fact which ruled over most aspects of life, and the author makes this very clear. She also makes clear her feelings about communism and the Soviet occupation, but what makes this a good read is that she also explains why. She uses facts and her own (many) personal experiences, and those of her parents, who rebelled against communism.

The author/narrator Dominika, as a little girl, is fun to read. She is extroverted, confident, and loves to talk loudly and in exclamations. Yet she is not perfect, and does not fully understand the political and economic situation around her. The author does not tell her story only from a little girl's eyes, but fills in with information that she had learned or realized later. This is both from a child's point of view and an older, informed, and quite intelligent point of view.

This was an easy read, as I finished it in half the time I normally take to read a book this size. The book covers her various adventures and acquaintances: an old Austrian caretaker, three kind old women who bake cakes, the neighbor children who are not allowed to play with the dissidents' daughter, ballet school and performances, Communist spies and informants who kept an eye on her parents and who her father played tricks on, Dominika's mother's parents (who have disowned her despite the father's reluctance), the family dog famous from Czech movies, the beautiful sister, the Easter when Dominika disguised herself as a boy so she could collect eggs from the women (until the other boys then stole her basket as well), and a somewhat stressful vacation in Poland.

Indeed, there are many other stories in this novel, complete with references to Czech culture and holidays. There are so many events that it's never a problem if I get to one that's rather boring -- it is soon over and another story is begun.

The Czech names weren't too hard to keep up with: the characters are introduced very gradually. Only, I found it maybe a little annoying that some characters had English words for last names (such as "German" or "Backyard") and I get the impression that she is translating Czech words into English, and leaves untranslated the names that aren't words. I would much prefer to see the original names.

The story ends around 1985, when Gorbachev came into power and Dominika's father was (correctly) hopeful that the Soviet occupation and Iron Curtain days would be over soon. I was a little disappointed because I wished to see what happened with the family when their hopes finally came true. Still, Dominika ends the story on the note that even if they continued to live under Communism, they would survive because they had each other.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in life in Soviet satellite countries (it didn't vary too greatly from country to country), or simply interested in a book filled with rich and exciting detail on a life that is both ordinary and unusual (especially to people from the West).