LA Cucina: A Novel of Rapture

Rating:
Summary: Terrific!
Review: This is a terrific summer read! If you liked "Like Water For Chocolate", you will love this story. The author uses humorous quips throughout that I can relate to with a giggle. I found myself captivated by this far-fetched protagonist who watches life happen to her in most unusual ways. This will never become a classic, but it was fun, fun, fun!

Rating:
Summary: A PLEASING BOOK
Review: This is the sort of read you will either love or hate. Myself, I liked it! The style, as well as the main character are quirky.
I like that. The author's ability to place supporting characters to the side, almost blurred, brings the first person protagonist into sharp focus. It is quite skillfully done and I am afraid some of the reviewers of this book missed the point completely. All in all, a good story, well done. Would recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A NICE READ
Review: This is the sort of read you will either love or hate. Myself, I liked it! The style, as well as the main character are quirky.
I like that. The author's ability to place supporting characters to the side, almost blurred, brings the first person protagonist into sharp focus. It is quite skillfully done and I am afraid some of the reviewers of this book missed the point completely. All in all, a good story, well done. Would recommend it.



Rating:
Summary: A PLEASING BOOK
Review: This is the sort of read you will either love or hate. Myself, I liked it! The style, as well as the main character are quirky.
I like that. The author's ability to place supporting characters to the side, almost blurred, brings the first person protagonist into sharp focus. It is quite skillfully done and I am afraid some of the reviewers of this book missed the point completely. All in all, a good story, well done. Would recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: don't bother
Review: This isn't a good book. Frankly, I'm surprized that there are any good reviews of this book. The storyline, the characters are all shallow and empty. I found some of the instances in the book to be down right rediculous. Overall, the writing was poor and immature. Don't buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Where passion and cooking collide
Review: When Rosa Fiore is faced with tragedy, she goes into her kitchen and cooks, and she goes to extremes, chickens, sausages, tomato sauce, pastas, breads, desserts, even oysters for large numbers of people and meant to last for years. The book opens on the family farm in the 1930's in Sicily. After her young lover is killed, she moves to Palermo, and lives a spinsterish life as a librarian, still cooking. It is now 25 years later and she meets a mysterious Englishman cookbook afficionado and scholar, and they begin an outrageous and culinary love affair until he too is tragically taken from her. Heartbroken, Rosa moves back to the family farm and runs it, still cooking. Reminiscent of "Like Water for Chocolate" and "Chocolat" this is a jolly good time book, with touches of the supernatural. Despite the piling on of tragedy, there is no time for tears, only for cooking and more cooking of one sensuous and mouth watering dish after another. The author's knowledge of Sicily shines through in every aspect of the book, including the Italian names for dishes, as well as ordinary objects and places, and gives authenticity to this phantasmagorical fairy tale. I would love to see a real cookbook inspired by this story!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and Downright Stupid
Review: While I read this book, I found myself hoping, it seems, against hope, that something within its pages would hook me and justify the other rave reviews that this book received from other readers. Whatever turned them on failed to do the same for me. I found the story, the characters, and yes, even the culinary secrets to be insipid. Rosa, even in her agony of losing her first love, merely reports what is going on around her--and that is not to say that the author succeeds in portraying her as a woman distraught beyond words--she is simply flat and two-dimensional I wondered if the novel had been written in another language and then translated badly into English--but alas, no. The author simply fails to make Rosa a likeable character. Her frenzy of cooking supposedly meant to obliterate her pain should tantalize the reader with other mesmerizing sensations, but again, this does not occur. Instead, it translates Rosa into a blood-thirsty butcher that appears about as senseless as a hamster turning mindlessly within the staid boredom of its exercise wheel--no offense to the hamster. The plot is likewise boring and ridiculous. Rosa runs away to become a librarian in Palermo where after twenty long and tedious years finally becomes enamoured with an Enlishman with terrible teeth---I kept envisioning Austin Powers loverly yellowed dentures--UGH! Their so-called erotic love scenes are also meant to titillate, but they are puncuated with descriptions of Rosa's sausagelike physique encased in sausage skin corsets out of which the hero must slice her. Not very sexy. The grand climax--excuse the pun-involves, inevitably with a Sicilian tale--the NIAF should be notified of this acutely painful stereotyping--the Mafia and sadly, more of Prior's canned peasant activities---most notably Rosa discovering her father may be either a debauched priest or a half-witted farmhand, Rosa finding her mother dead in a lump of kneaded dough and SuperRosa aiding in the delivery of her Siamese twin brothers' prostitute wife's triplet daughters. Phew! The reunification of the two lovers is given no play at all--resulting in a tiny paragraph on the last page where miraculously Rosa as new queen of the country farm is proudly enscounced with her fabulously fattening food, her lackey brothers and finally her own personal court jester.
I do not recommend this book AT ALL. ... Just don't take 'La Cucina' seriously, the characters and the plot which I suppose the author and her editor thought hysterically off key simply fail to amuse. I add an extra star for some of the culinary procedures explained throughout the book; they do call to mind the rich smell of garlic sauteeing in a good full-bodied olive oil, but pathetically the book does nothing more.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and Downright Stupid
Review: While I read this book, I found myself hoping, it seems, against hope, that something within its pages would hook me and justify the other rave reviews that this book received from other readers. Whatever turned them on failed to do the same for me. I found the story, the characters, and yes, even the culinary secrets to be insipid. Rosa, even in her agony of losing her first love, merely reports what is going on around her--and that is not to say that the author succeeds in portraying her as a woman distraught beyond words--she is simply flat and two-dimensional I wondered if the novel had been written in another language and then translated badly into English--but alas, no. The author simply fails to make Rosa a likeable character. Her frenzy of cooking supposedly meant to obliterate her pain should tantalize the reader with other mesmerizing sensations, but again, this does not occur. Instead, it translates Rosa into a blood-thirsty butcher that appears about as senseless as a hamster turning mindlessly within the staid boredom of its exercise wheel--no offense to the hamster. The plot is likewise boring and ridiculous. Rosa runs away to become a librarian in Palermo where after twenty long and tedious years finally becomes enamoured with an Enlishman with terrible teeth---I kept envisioning Austin Powers loverly yellowed dentures--UGH! Their so-called erotic love scenes are also meant to titillate, but they are puncuated with descriptions of Rosa's sausagelike physique encased in sausage skin corsets out of which the hero must slice her. Not very sexy. The grand climax--excuse the pun-involves, inevitably with a Sicilian tale--the NIAF should be notified of this acutely painful stereotyping--the Mafia and sadly, more of Prior's canned peasant activities---most notably Rosa discovering her father may be either a debauched priest or a half-witted farmhand, Rosa finding her mother dead in a lump of kneaded dough and SuperRosa aiding in the delivery of her Siamese twin brothers' prostitute wife's triplet daughters. Phew! The reunification of the two lovers is given no play at all--resulting in a tiny paragraph on the last page where miraculously Rosa as new queen of the country farm is proudly enscounced with her fabulously fattening food, her lackey brothers and finally her own personal court jester.
I do not recommend this book AT ALL. ... Just don't take 'La Cucina' seriously, the characters and the plot which I suppose the author and her editor thought hysterically off key simply fail to amuse. I add an extra star for some of the culinary procedures explained throughout the book; they do call to mind the rich smell of garlic sauteeing in a good full-bodied olive oil, but pathetically the book does nothing more.