Andrew Lindsay — The Breadmaker's Carnival

Allen & Unwin 1999 Paperback, 360pp. It is impossible to describe this novel in a few words. Read it and marvel, and give thanks that such a novel can come out of Australia. DOROTHY HEWETT Gianni Terremoto is a baker. He is on a quest to bake his way into history. Gianni's lover's breasts have become the baker's mental mould for his rolls and sourdoughs and his daughter Francesca is about to become enshrined as the new local saint, their carnival martyr. In the year in question Good Friday and April Fool's day coincide. Gianni, born an April Fool, decides to bake a hot cross bun the like of which there's never been. The ensuing hallucinations and food poisoning derail the entire town. This is the story of the first Breadmaker's Carnival - when Easter and the Carnival collide the town is changed forever. 'Andrew Lindsay's novel is far in advance of the general surfeit of first fiction.the final result is a first-class, fully rounded book.read this and you might suffer a surfeit of smiling.' Neil James Sydney Morning Herald '.a rare bird among first novels - a mature adult entertainment leavened by verbal wit, bawdy narration and a profound sense of the bizarre codes that unify small communities. Lindsay's book provokes, often hilariously, meditations that may strike at many readers' assumptions of superlative rationality.' Michael Sharkey, The Weekend Australian. (ISBN: 9781865081106). Good.