Lunch Ladies by Jodi Thompson Carr; A Pleasant Dining Experience With Lovely Characters on The Side
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Jodi Thompson Carr’s Lunch Ladies is a tasty delightful treat that pays tribute to the unsung heroes of every school dining experience, the cafeteria workers. Through their cooking, serving, and cleaning up, they make sure that every kid has at least one hot meal a day. Now with Free Lunch programs being held under scrutiny, their role within academic settings is even more important and should be all the more recognized. This book is a lovely pleasant experience of a few weeks spent exploring the inner lives of various characters, particularly three protagonists who work at the Hanley School District’s lunch department in Hanley, Minnesota.
It's almost time for the 4th of July festivities during the Bicentennial of 1976 and the women of the lunch department are preparing for this event while serving daily meals and dealing with their own problems.
Crystal has an unusual hobby. She scours obituaries mentally matching the recently deceased up with the living, therefore creating couples in her imagination. Her active fantasy life and imagination is a distraction from her conflicts with her aging grandmother and troubled niece.
Coralene is happily married to her husband, Jasper. Her simple life is about to become complicated when her wayward nephew, Tanner moves in.
Sheila lives a life of routine, eating at the same places, watching the same shows, and indulging in her independence and predictability. That predictability goes through a severe change when she reunites with a former acquaintance only to find herself falling in love with him.
Lunch Ladies is one of those types of novels that isn't really about anything. Well no, it's about various things like love, separation, family, and death but the focus is not so much about what happens than who is affected by these circumstances. It's a few months in the lives of these characters as they deal with the various shake ups in their lives. There's enough quirky charm and harsh drama to make the Reader like, even love, these characters as they go through these shake ups.
It's the kind of book that has details that are almost too precious to be ignored like character names for example. Coralene and most of the female members of her family have names that are variations of Cora-Cora, Coralene, Coravelle, DeCora, etc.-I would comment some more but the names “Edsel” and “Jean” are frequent on my mother's side of the family, the Riopelles.
Crystal’s late mother's name was Pearl and she had a twin sister named Ruby. Crystal's grandmother and niece lucked out by being named Leonora and Darcy respectively. (Too bad, Emerald and Sapphire or Diamond and Amethyst would have been pretty.)
There are three sisters on the Bicentennial parade committee nicknamed, Hi, Lo, and Glad. Sheila catches the attraction of a named Tom Downlane (He joked that he's “Tom who lives Down the Lane.”) One of Crystal's obituary projects is named Roger Squirrel. The names reveal the idiosyncrasies of the characters.
The characters have little traits and quirks that make them stand out and Readers infer and learn who these people are just by their thoughts and mannerisms. Crystal's obituary reading/matchmaking is certainly very strange but leads to much speculation. Perhaps she is a firm believer in life after death and wants some sign that it's possible. Maybe she is obsessed with death and wants to meet it head on. The strongest possibility is that she is in search of a story.
Crystal is unable to take any type of charge in her life. She works at a hard job with little recognition or pay. Her mother and aunt died. Her grandmother is losing her faculties. She is at odds with her niece, Darcy who calls her out on her lack of attention to the real world around her. Crystal’s only means of escape are inside the little matchmaking fantasies inside her head. They are the only ways that she can connect and truly feel like she contributed something to someone. Inside her head is where she finds freedom and involvement.
While Crystal’s headspace is where she finds comfort, Coralene looks more outward. She wears loud printed pants suits to be seen as more modern, willing to change but still do her job. She is a very central force within her family and community. She is a warm nucleus that draws others in, particularly Tanner.
Tanner has had a difficult life with his neglectful parents. He can be polite and soft spoken but also carries a lot of anger and resentment. This attitude plus his dubious reputation adds some strife into Coralene 's home, life, and marriage. He has never been close to someone who has natural warmth like Coralene so he doesn't know what to do with it, nor does she know how to react to it. However, Coralene and Tanner are both decent enough people that the love is present even when they are at odds.
Sheila is the oldest of the trio and probably the most regretful. She is a former English teacher who had a previous romance but now has a rigid private life. She goes to the same Denny's every day to the point that she befriends Lexi, the young server. She corrects the girl’s grammar, answers her questions about life and love, and gives her anecdotes from her teaching career. That she has a close intergenerational friendship with someone who would normally be a casual acquaintance shows Sheila’s awareness that her independent life comes with strings like loneliness and emotional instincts that are aching to be filled.
Her late in life romance should be a breath of fresh air, a late flaming roar of passion. Instead it unnerves and confuses her, asking more questions than answers. It forces her to confront her feelings of love and mortality. For a woman whose life became rigid routine and living vicariously through acquaintanceship with others, Sheila can't handle the deep emotional chasms, the countering attachments, and rapid disruptions that this relationship brings to her.
The Hanley setting leads a lot to the book’s characterization. It's a small town where everything, even the seemingly most minor issues become big deals. Everyone is involved with the Bicentennial from designing floats, preparing catering services, planning themes. The changes in the lunch department becomes a source of conflict as Sheila wants to survey students and faculty over the food choices and portions. This book shows that line between networking and annoyance where it's nice to have a support system when one needs help but it can also be suffocating because everyone is in everybody's face and in everybody's way.
Also while Hanley looks idyllic, that might be on the surface. Some characters like the slow pace and friendly neighbors but others are just used to it. Characters like Crystal and Sheila are so used to their routines, hobbies, and mindsets that they don't have any desire to aspire for something different. Why dream of getting away? There are bills to pay, shows to watch, kids to raise, committees to join, lunches to cook, and obituaries to read. Hanley is a comfort zone that they benignly accept. It's not a bad place, just ordinary, regular, typical, nice, and pleasant.
There is an edge to the book that keeps it from being too copying or schmaltzy. That edge is hinted at in some of the character's subplots though not deeply explored until late in the book. Something terrible happens that jolts the characters out of their complacency and personal conflicts. It seems to come unexpectedly though, it was subtly hinted throughout the book.
This incident forces the characters to come out of those benign comfort zones that they built around themselves, to make great changes, and to reshape their lives. Like many hard times, the characters’ strength and resilience comes through because of the events around them.
Lunch Ladies is filled with memorable characters and a setting that can be sweet and harsh, funny and tear jerking, vulnerable and strong, charming and realistic, beautiful and tragic. It is a delectable feast of great emotion.
