I decided to ease my way into nonfiction this year with Monica Dickens’s One Pair of Hands. Reading it was only partially in keeping my with 2013 reading resolutions, but it was something to start me on the nonfiction path (where I would hopefully continue until I found myself reading some piece of narrative nonfiction that my brother-in-law might enjoy).

But before I can even talk to you about the book, I must address the truly terrible cover gracing the US version of this memoir, which is unlikely to entice you to read the book. My sister is a graphic designer and I like to think of myself as having imbibed from her a sense of what is “good design” and so feel that, despite my lack of design embellishment on my own blog, I am qualified to say that this is an unequivocally ugly book cover:

image via Amazon

So ugly, in fact, that I actually checked the book out over at Amazon UK, and considered getting the UK version instead, because the cover over there is considerably less offensive to my taste and design sensibility. I suppose since the publisher here in the US (Academy Chicago Publishers) has, mystifyingly, classified this book on their website as “Fiction & Poetry” rather than “memoir” or “nonfiction” (or even, given the subject matter, “Food & Cooking” — that’s an available category, too!), the cover only seems to exhibit the same shocking lack of judgment. (Um, #librarianproblems … right?)

screenshot of ACP “Our Books” page

Upon further investigation, I discovered that Academy Chicago was simply reusing the illustration by Dione Tegner used on the cover of the 1961 Penguin edition. Still, one asks oneself, why that illustration, and why with the orange border? It’s somehow less offensive on the 1961 Penguin.

Well, if ever there were a time not to judge a book by its cover, that time is now. One Pair of Hands tells the story of how, after being expelled from drama school, Monica (a great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens) eschewed the debutante’s life of parties and chose instead, on the sole experience of a few cooking courses, to try her hand at being a cook-general.

The ensuing stories of life in service, Monica’s various failures and successes and the unreasonable demands of many of her employers, are a hilarious glimpse of life below stairs, and rather more Gosford Park than Downton Abbey: you won’t meet a benevolent butler like Carson in these pages.

You will meet one or two fallen soufflés, the rare considerate employer and the more common inconsiderate one, tremendously amusing anecdotes, and one failed actress with considerably more self-confidence than I’ve ever had, who created a role for herself and brazened out the performance to its conclusion, which, all told, makes for highly entertaining reading.