Manno’s debut is a memoir which chronicles his love of food and family and his restless search for purpose.
What would Mama say? The surprising answer to this question—posed by Italian chef and restaurateur Manno as often as garden-ripe tomatoes and olive oil grace the pages of this memoir with recipes—comes at the end of a long journey that begins in poverty in Calabria, Italy. There, as a young boy, Manno runs barefoot tending his small herd of goats before the chance for a better life takes his family to Milan. After several dissatisfying jobs, including a lengthy stint as a delivery boy at a butcher shop, teenage Manno seizes on the idea of becoming a chef. A surprise visit from his American cousin Al alters Manno’s life forever when Al offers to sponsor Manno in California. At 20, Manno becomes an immigrant in the San Joaquin Valley and begins life anew again. The author’s primary loves are his mother and food, the latter unquestioned. Food, and the high he gets from “working the line,” informs his thoughts and writing, and leads to metaphors such as: “the dreadful feeling of not fully sucking the marrow out of life persisted.” Like other foreigners before him, Manno shares keen observations about American food habits and culture, both good and bad. He provides a mirror through which readers can see their own culture reflected back, whether discussing abundance and the sense of infinite possibility, or waste and the unsettling feeling of impermanence and lack of tradition. Throughout this heartfelt memoir, readers will be anxious to discover what’s next as the author takes on new challenges and straddles the divide of two cultures. A compelling glimpse into modern American food and immigrant cultures.
Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-615-41319-8
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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