46 pages • 1-hour read
Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Cut and Come Again Cake”
In a flashback, 16-year-old Jenny lingers while closing the clothing store where she works, hoping for a visitor. She is thrilled when 30-year-old Ray Smith, her employer’s son, stops in to see her. Ray offers to walk Jenny home and dismisses her questions about his wife. Although filled with shame, Jenny is excited by Ray’s attention.
In the present, Jenny prepares a tea cake for her friends Ann and Fred, who are stopping by for a Valentine’s Day tea. Jenny feels inadequate when Ann brags about their grandchildren and implies that Jenny has nothing but free time without grandchildren. After Ann and Fred leave, Bernard notices that there is a message for Jenny on the answering machine. Jenny realizes that it is from the Britain Bakes producers, and she is forced to tell Bernard the truth about her application. He is frustrated by the lie but forgives her.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Baked Alaska”
In a flashback, Jenny reveals her flirtation with Ray Smith to her best friend Sandra, who chastises her for kissing a married man. Sandra’s criticisms amplify Jenny’s feelings of guilt.
In the present, Jenny wakes up early to check her email for updates from Britain Bakes. Finding nothing, she carefully prepares Bernard’s favorite dessert, Baked Alaska, as a surprise and apology for her lie. As she bakes, she remembers a disastrous dinner party when the ice cream inside her Baked Alaska melted, ruining the dessert.
Jenny falls asleep at the kitchen table and is woken the next morning by Bernard, who encourages her to take a bath and relax. While in the bath, Jenny receives a call from the Britain Bakes producers, who congratulate her on being officially cast in the show. They tell Jenny not to tell anyone she has been cast until filming ends. Bernard is thrilled for Jenny.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Gingerbread All Saints Church”
Jenny spends months preparing for Britain Bakes, testing recipes and practicing her skills. When the production company comes to film her introductory scenes at home, Jenny prepares a giant gingerbread model of the church where she and Bernard were married. Bernard jokes that he was handsomer than his gingerbread counterpart.
When the producers arrive, they compliment the chaos of Jenny’s kitchen and Bernard’s homegrown flowers. Jenny and Bernard struggle to act normal in front of the camera, and they are forced to film several takes before the producers are satisfied. Jenny increasingly feels as if the cameras and the film crew are transforming the familiar aspects of her life into something artificial.
After the film crew leaves, Jenny confides to Bernard that she worries she’s wrong for the show, and the producers know they’ve made a mistake. Bernard insists that the producers made the right choice in casting her.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Lime and Mascarpone Cheesecake”
Jenny and Bernard invite Rose’s family to spend the weekend with them to reveal the secret of Jenny’s casting on Britain Bakes. Rose is thrilled, as is her teenage son Max, who rarely shows interest in anything. The next morning, Max surprises Jenny by offering to set up and run her social media accounts with the username “Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame.”
Rose takes Jenny shopping to buy makeup and new clothes for the show. At the makeup counter, the sales assistant gives Jenny a full makeover, which both Rose and Jenny reject as excessive for baking. Later, when Jenny and Rose are separated in the women’s department, another sales assistant mistakenly believes that Jenny is lost and incompetent. Jenny is embarrassed and worries that audience members will also see her as too old to be taken seriously. She thinks back to herself as a young sales assistant, feeling as if her life is about to change as dramatically as it did back then.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Quiche Lorraine”
Jenny prepares a Quiche Lorraine for Bernard to eat while she is away filming the first week of Britain Bakes. She is nervous to leave him alone for the first time in their marriage. On the drive, she expresses concerns that she was cast as a joke. Bernard assures her that she deserves her place on the show. They have an emotional goodbye at the hotel.
Inside the hotel, she is reunited with Azeez. She thanks him for helping fix her cake on the day of the audition. They commiserate about the difficulties of preparing for the show. At dinner, Jenny meets other contestants, including influencer Sorcha, firefighter Paul, a vicar, a drama teacher, and a farmer. She also meets the show’s executive producer, Sarah. At night, Jenny struggles to sleep alone in the large hotel bed and cannot fall asleep without the sound of Bernard reading and snoring.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Rhubarb and Custard Drizzle Cakes”
In a flashback, teenage Jenny visits a doctor after feeling nauseous and learns that she is pregnant. She implies that Ray convinced her she could not become pregnant. The doctor encourages her to place the baby for adoption but also suggests that another option, implied to be abortion, is available.
In the present, Jenny begins her first day of filming in the Stables, the iconic set for Britain Bakes. The producers have decorated her workstation to resemble her home kitchen and are allowing her to use her old-fashioned manual weights. She is thrilled to meet the show’s judge Amanda and its hosts, the alternative comedian Mo and the more traditional Katie.
Jenny adapts quickly to working in the televised kitchen. Her first bake is a set of 12 rhubarb custard drizzle cakes, which are a success. Azeez struggles with his bake but receives some positive feedback. Jenny wishes she could tell Bernard about her successes right away.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Chocolate and Orange Battenburg”
Teenage Jenny struggles to keep her pregnancy a secret from her best friend and schoolmate Sandra. When she reveals the pregnancy to Ray, he suggests that she has no proof he is the father and insists that he wants nothing to do with her and will not leave his wife. He encourages her to quit her job and calls her an embarrassment. Jenny runs away, humiliated.
In the present, Jenny prepares her grandmother’s Battenberg cake for the Baker’s Delight segment of the show. Despite the time crunch, she and Azeez find time to laugh while baking next to each other. Jenny’s bake is a success, and she is chosen as one of the top two bakers of the week. As a result, she will compete for the coveted golden whisk in the Blind Bake Challenge the following day, with the chance to win immunity in the following week’s competition.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Pineapple Upside Down Cake”
Jenny nervously prepares to compete in the Blind Bake Challenge in front of her fellow bakers. She is relieved to see that her competitor, firefighter Paul, is also nervous. The bake is revealed to be a pineapple upside-down cake. Jenny has only had the cake once, when her aunt Ethel made it for a family party. After Jenny’s father complained of an itchy mouth, signaling an allergy, no one in the family made it again.
Despite her lack of experience, Jenny feels confident she can recreate the cake and begins making a sponge. She grows nervous as she falls behind Paul, and as she pulls the cake out of the oven, she realizes she forgot to line the tin. The cake falls apart as she attempts to present it.
Jenny arrives home to find that Bernard has prepared dinner for her and picked flowers from his garden for the table. He is thrilled that she has made it through to the next week despite losing the Blind Bake Challenge.
Chapters 11-18 Analysis
In this section of Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame, Jenny’s experience filming Britain Bakes reflects author Olivia Ford’s professional experience as a producer of reality television. The novel suggests that the presence of the film crew distorts reality while filming in Jenny’s home and that the experience on set is equally unnerving. Jenny’s first experience with reality television is when the Britain Bakes show comes to film introductory shots. The presence of the film crew disturbs both the Quinns: Bernard feels “like a stranger in his own home” (118), while Jenny notes that “it just doesn’t feel real…it’s as if I’ve borrowed someone else’s life” (123). These passages suggest that both Bernard and Jenny feel like the footage the film crew is capturing does not reflect their real life. At the same time, they both worry about the potential for the crew to reveal their flaws on film. Jenny feels “as if a magnifying glass were hovering above her every move” (118), and she worries when Bernard is “exposed under the bright light that had been positioned above his head so that it highlighted every freckle of his eighty-two years” (119). The references to magnification and exposure in this passage reflect Jenny’s fear of what the cameras might show. Jenny’s first encounter with reality television reflects the complicated nature of the genre: Although she feels the film crew cannot capture the reality of her life, she worries that they can capture her flaws.
When Jenny begins filming on set, the distinction between reality and reality television grows fuzzier. As a devoted fan of Britain Bakes, she is thrilled to be on the set she “had seen so many times on the television,” and “recognized everything as if it were an old friend” on the first day of filming (158). Despite her familiarity with the set via television, Jenny feels uncomfortable throughout her first day of filming. She describes feeling “as if she were underwater, watching everything from inside a diving suit, immersed and yet separate” (159) from the people and events around her. She finds that “time took on a whole new meaning” (174) in the tent, with hours-long challenges passing quickly and days lasting longer than she thought possible. The novel suggests that being on set is a disorienting experience, making Jenny feel isolated and out of time despite her perceived familiarity with the show.
Although she is not familiar with reality television or familiar with celebrity culture, Jenny is keenly aware that everything she is doing is for an audience. While filming in her home, Jenny is unable to ignore the “lights, cameras, and strangers that surrounded her” (118). Later, on set, she similarly struggles with the fact that “there were people and lights and cameras everywhere” (129). Her repeated complaints reflect her awareness of the artificial nature of reality television, which is carefully constructed by a crew. The novel suggests that, throughout the filming process, Jenny and her fellow contestants are “painfully aware of their audience” (121). This audience includes both the immediate film crew and the future audience of viewers of Britain Bakes.
While filming, Jenny is separated from her husband Bernard, whom she has been married to for nearly 60 years. Bernard’s absence causes Jenny to realize how deeply their lives are intertwined. Throughout this section, Jenny associates Bernard with “the noise of the everyday” (149). Reflecting on their lives together, Jenny notes that “every morning like clockwork […] she would hear him in the bathroom, tapping his razor three times on the side of the sink before swilling it in the basin” (111). The sound of Bernard shaving would inevitably be followed by “the squeal of the shower as it burst into life” (111). She describes how her day is punctuated by the sounds of him moving around the house, “the chorus of Bernard’s whistle, the rumble of his kettle boiling” (155). Finally, she describes listening to “the rustling of his book as he turned its pages and then the back and forth of his snore like waves against the shore” (149) as she tries to fall asleep (149). These passages suggest that, from morning to night, Jenny’s day is anchored by the sounds her husband Bernard makes as he lives his life alongside her. The novel’s depiction of Bernard as the soundtrack to Jenny’s life reflects how deeply their lives are entwined after 60 years of marriage.
Unlock all 46 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs