I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes…

About the Book:

A fairy-tale for grown-ups.

The Zing family lives in a misguided world of spell books, flying beach umbrellas, and state-of-the-art covert surveillance equipment. There’s a slippery Zing, a graceful Zing, and a Zing who runs as fast as a bus. But most significant of all, there’s the Zing Family Secret: so immense that it draws the family to the garden shed for meetings every Friday night.

I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes is a grown-up fairy-tale, and a mystery set in the suburbs. It’s about what happens when hope leads to sad and hilarious mistakes and when mistakes lead to hope once again. It’s about what happens when you meet a Zing.

The first adult novel from the award-winning author of Feeling Sorry for Celia and Finding Cassie Crazy.

My Thoughts:

“The three-legged race was not pointless. You used these skills when you ran in the rain with your arm around your lover’s waist.”

There is an element of Dr. Seuss prevalent throughout this novel, a kind of “Who-ville” aspect that really appealed to my quirky sense of humour. I read my first Jaclyn Moriarty earlier this year – her latest release for adults, Gravity is the Thing – and her style had instant appeal for me. I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes was first released back in 2004, so it has been a long time between adult fiction releases for Jaclyn. This novel though, is quite extraordinary. Truly original and so much fun with a fair bit of poignancy thrown into the mix. Jaclyn writes with an emphasis that jumps right off the page along with well-timed irony and plenty of humorous instances of stating the obvious – even if it is only with introspect. It is quintessentially Australian without any stereotypes and it dates very well – almost a classic in the making. At the heart of this novel is a mystery like no other and it amused me greatly once all the pieces of this charmingly puzzling book began to fall into place. If you read Gravity is the Thing this year and have a yearning for more of Jaclyn Moriarty, then wind back the years and pick up I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes. You will be utterly delighted with it.

“The complication was this: that, sometimes, in the darkest part of the night, she wished that the Secret continued. While her cheeks burned, angry and humiliated by their surveillance, somewhere in her heart was the cold recognition that now she was truly alone. It was almost as if, all her life, she had intuitively known they were watching and had basked in the limelight.”

☕☕☕☕

About the Author:

Jaclyn Moriarty grew up in Sydney’s north-west and studied Law and English on three continents – at Sydney University in Australia, Yale in the US and Cambridge in England. She spent four years working as a media and entertainment lawyer and now writes full-time so that she can sleep in each day. She lives in Sydney.

I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Released in 2004