The Kitchen House is another one of my grown up picks for Black History Month. You might remember, Black History Month is happening all year here. Each month or so, I’m hoping to feature another title. This book and the last one were both written by white women, and I intend to include titles by authors of color as the year goes on.

How does this one stack up to The Invention of Wings?

I read The Kitchen House, by Kathleen Grissom, over the course of two days. It had me from the opening lines, and kept my interest till the very last page. With a gripping introduction, the story wastes no time digging deep.

The story takes place on a plantation called Tall Oaks in the South in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. Full of vibrant imagery and emotional storytelling, the descriptions are so vivid that the book may as well have had pictures. The Kitchen House tells a well-paced tale with themes including power dynamics, family, and integrity. Grissom builds the tension until you can’t put the book down.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when an author tells a story with loads of characters, but after an initial physical description with each character’s introduction, they are only referred to by name. The reader is expected to keep track of who everyone is. I’m terrible at that. I’m very visual, and the name of a character does nothing to help me remember who they are.

The Kitchen House is chock full of characters with often complicated connections – several people in the story don’t even know how they are connected to the other characters for most of the story, or are wrong about how they are connected. Sound confusing? Yet Grissom masterfully keeps everyone straight, with timely, unforced details about the character’s connections to one another or their physical appearance.

These aren’t one-note characters. The book sketches out a complex matrix of family connections, making us care about each character we meet. Multiple characters go by more than one name, yet the way the story is told keeps it from bogging the reader down.

The Invention of Wings and The Kitchen House actually have a number of characters with either a similar connection to one another, or similar physical descriptions. Both books have complex, interesting characters and great storytelling. But the stories are wildly different, and Kidd’s Wings ended on a fantastic note that felt somewhat false. Grissom’s novel ended in a similarly climactic fashion, but it felt like a believable conclusion to the story.

While Grissom’s novel is violent at times, she shies away from gratuitous depictions and instead relies on innuendo and implication for some of the most horrifying events. While the reader isn’t left hanging, Grissom doesn’t neatly tie everything off to make us feel better at the end.

In a fascinating interview at the back of the book, Grissom explains the origins of the story. It’s not to be missed.

I know I’m a tough critic when it comes to book, but this one, I’m giving five stars. It was incredibly well written, and I definitely recommend it. I look forward to exploring more titles by Kathleen Grissom.

My photography assistant, Four, is the one who set this book up on the kitchen rug during our photo shoot. I hadn’t even thought of it until he did it, and the colors matched perfectly. :).