The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe

Born into a basket of clean sheets—ruining a perfectly good load of laundry—Emmeline never quite fit in on her family’s rural Nova Scotian farm. After suffering multiple losses in the First World War, her family became so heavy with grief, toxicity, and mental illness that Emmeline felt their weight smothering her. And so, she fled across the Atlantic and built her life in England. Now she is retired and living in a small coastal town with her best friend, Vera, an excellent conversationalist. Vera is also a small white dog, and so Emmeline is making an effort to talk to more humans. When she joins a memoir-writing course at the library, her classmates don’t know what to make of her. Funny, loud, and with a riveting memoir, she charms the lot. As her past unfolds for her audience, friendships form, a bonus in a rather lonely life. She even shares with them her third-biggest secret: she has liberated hundreds of spoons over her lifetime—from the local library, Cary Grant, Winston Churchill. She is a compulsive spoon stealer. 

When Emmeline unexpectedly inherits the farm she grew up on, she knows she needs to leave her new friends and go see the farm and what remains of her family one last time. She arrives like a tornado in their lives, an off-kilter Mary Poppins bossing everyone around and getting quite a lot wrong. But with her generosity and hard-earned wisdom, she gets an awful lot right too. A pinball ricocheting between people, offending and inspiring in equal measure, Emmeline, in her final years, believes that a spoonful—perhaps several spoonfuls—of kindness can set to rights the family so broken by loss and secrecy. 

The Spoon Stealer is a classic Crewe book: full of humour, family secrets, women’s friendship, lovable animals, and immense heart.

My thoughts:

Thank you to Nimbus Publishing and the Tandem Collective for the opportunity to join the readalong for The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe, a new author to me.

Regular readers of my reviews will know that I enjoy reading historical fiction books and this book looks at the life of Emmeline Darling between the late 1800’s and early 1970’s.

I loved this book. As the reader gets to know Emmeline, we discover what a caring person she is and how life has been tough at times. We find out slowly about her past as she makes new friends at the library writing club, before travelling back to Canada again.

This book features various elements of 20th century history, alongside family and friendship issues. There really is something for everyone in the story and I recommend having a box of tissues handy too.

Happy to recommend this book which has jumped into my top reads of 2023 list.