Nearly 100 people attended the recent launch of Brandl & Schlesinger’s latest title The Baker’s Alchemy by Leura author, John Stephenson.
This was a true Blue Mountains collaboration - written by a local Leuran, published by Blackheath publishers and launched by another Blue Mountains author, Barry Oakley.
Further Mountains connections are evident as Stephenson, himself living on the edge of a great forest, sets this book within another great forest on the other side of the world.
The Baker’s Alchemy is a work of magical realism set in Poland in the 1870s. The tale follows the exploits of Ignacy, a master baker who has taken a new and much younger wife, who although attentive and dutiful to her husband, will not allow him into her bed. Ignacy enlists the help of a white witch’s potion to help him renew his youthful vigour.
What transpires is a fable on the moral quandaries of fidelity, and deception ensues. The book is full of playfulness, inventive details and clever word wit.
In launching the book, Oakley said: “Comical, historical, fantastical, erotic - to move across these genres so easily is the mark of writer in total control of his art. If he has not written the great Polish novel, he’s written a great Polish novel - but in its cheeky irreverence it’s also profoundly Australian. The Baker’s Alchemy is fabulous in the literal sense of the word.”
The book has already received a very positive review in The Saturday Paper: “… The Baker’s Alchemy marks an exuberant and unconventional return from a wickedly smart author. There has been nothing else like it released this year.”
The Baker’s Alchemy is available in local bookstores for $29.95.