Join The Candid Book Club at Waterstones Piccadilly for an evening with Ishi Robinson to discuss her debut novel Sweetness in the Skin. 

For Pumkin Patterson, family is complicated. There’s her mother Paulette, who ignores her. There’s her beloved Auntie Sophie, who her mother resents. And there’s her grandmother, who has always played favourites. Whenever tensions rise, Pumkin retreats to the kitchen - creating the Jamaican bread puddings and coconut drops that have always given her comfort. 

When Sophie moves to France for work, she vows to send for her niece in one year’s time - but follow her aunt, she’ll have to escape her mother and make enough money to get to Marseille. Inspired by her skills in the kitchen, Pumkin turns to her community in the hope that she can sell enough sweet treats to bake her way out.  

Ishi Robinson was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. A Canadian citizen, she has lived in Bern, Toronto, Rome, London and now lives in Berlin with her Czech husband. Her first published work was a short story in Jamaica’s national newspaper when she was eleven years old. At seventeen, she sent a letter to her father from Switzerland that he thought was so funny he sent it to the other national newspaper, which snagged her a weekly column on teenage life in Kingston. She also previously wrote a weekly column on life as an expat in Rome for a now defunct online magazine. She got back into fiction writing in Berlin, from where she has published short stories in several online publications and one anthology. Sweetness in the Skin is her debut novel. 

We encourage attendees to read the book beforehand to allow for an open discussion on the night, but copies of the book will also be available to purchase online via the Book & Ticket bundle – to be collected at the event.