Families were like sand dunes, Grace decided. They shifted shape and position with even the gentlest of forces. Even a tiny puff – a shrug – could bring about change, move a handful of thoughts to a new understanding, a new authority. A gale, like today’s, and whole dunes – lives and futures – were relocated, reimagined.
About the book
Grace has not had twelve people at her table for a long time. Hers isn’t the kind of family who share regular Sunday meals. But it isn’t every day you turn seventy.
As Grace prepares the feast, she reflects on her long life, her marriage and her friendships. When the generations come together, simmering tensions from the past threaten to boil over. The one thing that no one can talk about is the one thing that no one can forget.
Grace’s Table is a moving and often funny novel about the power of memory and the family rituals that define us.
Australian edition (University of Queensland Press)
UK/Ireland edition (Legend Press)
WHERE YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK
At all good bookstores or online at booktopia.com.au
Reviews
A wise and tender novel about food, friendship and marriage.
- KRISTINA OLSSON, author of Boy, Lost and Shell
An emotional and uplifting look at how food brings families together.
- EVA WOODS, author of How to be Happy
I loved Grace’s Table. Sally Piper makes the ordinary extraordinary in her finely observed and profoundly moving snapshot of a woman preparing to feed her family. The events of the day, and Grace’s flashbacks to both happier and sadder times, show how the choosing, cooking and serving of food can say so much about the dynamics of our relationships. Love, comfort, power, control and secrecy are all bound up in the simple acts that Grace – and all of us – carry out unquestioningly. It’s a delight to discover, in Grace’s Table, a story that’s so simple yet so deeply thought-provoking.
- SARAH HAYWOOD, author of The Cactus
…a biography in a meal…It’s a great idea and quite beautifully written.
- WENDY HOLDEN for The Daily Mail (UK)
Each course, each flavour, is carefully chosen to evoke atmosphere and emotions…a tender, thought-provoking novel.
- WI Life Magazine (UK)
Delightfully insightful…a highly credible and readable story…a work by a great new Australian author who writes with great insight and compassion.
- 5 Stars, Good Reading Magazine
[A]...beguiling novel. Grace's Table is involving, moving, amusing and genuinely entertaining.
- 4 Stars, Books+Publishing
An eminently readable first novel…Piper vividly brings this woman to life, and in doing so imparts some interesting commentary on everything from Australian small-town racism to the differences in women’s lives over four generations.
- ArtsHub
This is a wonderful book reflecting on love, relationships, friendship and all of it centred around food.
- The Big Book Club
BOOK CLUB NOTES