Aggie has reached that “certain age” – in her case, a thousand years or so, give or take a decade.
After centuries of bringing kings to their knees, running a small-town cafe isn’t how she imagined her life would pan out. Now, thanks to the machinations of the false vegan from across the road, she
risks losing even that.
And just when she thinks things can’t get any worse, along comes her old friend, Babs, in her House-on-chicken-legs, ready to ruffle some feathers with her unique blend of borscht, tough love and alcohol.
But everybody has a secret – the grocer who hides his loneliness behind a cheery smile, the neighbour crippled by debt and grief, and the young woman who jumps at her shadow – and before Aggie can help anyone else, she has demons of her own to lay to rest.
Can she confront her past to save her future? What is the ‘Vegan’ really hiding? Will Babs ever let her have the last word?
Raucous, rowdy, and heart-wrenching and heart-warming in equal measures, Babs and Aggie is a magical tale of love, loss and the comfort of a friendship forged through food, laughter and a LOT of slivovica.
Hazel Hitchins is a writer who spends her days having conversations with her imaginary friends, some of which she writes down. She lives in Wales with her normal family, normal(ish) cat, and entirely abnormal laundry pile.
Find her on socials: @hazelhitchinsauthor
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My thoughts: Growing up the one thing I was genuinely terrified of was the Baba Yaga and her house with chicken legs. My mum had read me a story about her and I was terrified that this Eastern European/Russian witch was going to turn up outside my window in the North London suburbs. I don’t know why, but there you go.
However, the Baba Yaga in this story, known as Babs, is a lot less terrifying, although she still has House with its chicken legs, and she is still a powerful witch. She’s come to help her sister in witchery Aggie, aka Black Agnes or Black Annis (from Leicestershire according to English folklore).
Aggie runs a café, dispensing tasty treats in a little shopping arcade, but she’s been struggling with a nasty bully known as The Vegan. His girlfriend owns a health food shop across the way and he likes to menace the other shopkeepers and seems to be focused on Aggie, maybe thinking an older woman would be the weakest.
Unfortunately for him, ancient sorceresses do not like being bullied. And Babs is here to help Aggie remind him of that. And when they discover the extent of his bullying ways, well, he’s done for. These ladies do not take kindly to his sort at all, calling on some old friends to give them some help to get him gone.
It’s a funny, empowering read, a reminder of the power of women, especially older women, of community, and of how we can stand up to bullies (including the one in the White House, my American chums) and get rid of them. I think I would be ok if this Baba Yaga dropped round with some pierogis and slivovica.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 