Anyone contemplating a trip to Naples would do well to keep this very useful, accessible book close at hand.
In her debut travel guide, Zaragoza puts together the ultimate companion for readers planning a trip to Naples.
In this readable, entertaining information guide for tourists, Zaragoza takes readers from the heights of Mount Vesuvius to the ruins of Pompeii and beyond. Part atlas, part history lesson, part epicurean review, this comprehensive handbook to Naples is without peer. The only thing missing is information on lodging, a subject outside the book’s purview. Zaragoza clearly has insider’s knowledge obtained by spending a great deal of time in the regions she describes. She knows that anyone who wishes to see “The Sanctuary of Mithras” in Capua needs to see a custodian off premises, where he or she will grab a key and beckon travelers to follow the route to the actual site. It’s tips like these that make this guide so special. Zaragoza starts off with a background history lesson before providing directions to the places she describes—some off-the-beaten-path destinations would be difficult if not impossible to find otherwise. When it comes to local cuisine, Zaragoza takes time not only to describe the food, but its origins as well. Some of the first pizzas, for instance, were made in Naples; the author informs the reader of the two main types of pizza and the best places to sample them. Coffee drinking in Naples is an altogether different experience than elsewhere. The amount is much less per serving—typically about a shot’s worth—but the sheer variety of formulations boggles the mind. Italians seem to take the idea of a coffee break seriously; it’s common to take pause from a busy workday to grab a quick pick-me-up at one of the city’s abundant cafes. Zaragoza’s explanation of the etiquette of coffee drinking is just another example of her ability to immerse readers in the culture and everyday lives of the people who inhabit the city.
Anyone contemplating a trip to Naples would do well to keep this very useful, accessible book close at hand.Pub Date: March 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0983509929
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Merchant's Press
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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