The Making of Mrs Petrakis

Mary Karras

'An evocative mix of history food and storytelling.' EVENING STANDARD BEST FICTION 2021
'a heart-warming heart-breaking story of love life family and of course baking.' RUTH HOGAN

Cyprus in the run up to the civil war of the 1970s... the threat of it hangs in the atmosphere like a fine mist. A terrible thing war. Against this backdrop of war and violence the island's inhabitants make the best they can of their lives building friendships falling in love having children watching people die making mistakes.

Maria Petrakis however flees a brutal marriage on the island where she has always lived for London and a new start. She opens a bakery on Green Lanes in Harringay - the centre of the small Greek Cypriot community whose residents have settled there to escape the war and start again. Here she comes into her own as she heals and atones through the kneading of bread and the selling of shamali cakes and cinnamon pastries to her customers.

There are glimpses of the lives of her neighbours friends and customers as they buy their bread and cakes. There's Mrs Koutsouli whose heart was broken when her handsome son married a xeni an English woman with fish-eyes and yellow hair. There's Mrs Pantelis driven half-mad with the grief of losing her son Nico in the war. And there's Mrs Vasili who claims to be related to Nana Mouskouri and grows her hair upwards so she can feel closer to God. Finally there's Elena Maria Petrakis' daughter-in-law who has been suffering with the blackness since having a baby and whom nobody knows quite how to help.

The Making Of Mrs Petrakis is a story about the limited choices women sometimes find themselves confronting. It's a story about repression and mental illness and the devastation it can wreak on lives. But above all it is a story of motherhood and love and of healing through the humble act of baking.

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