Unconventional, impassioned, vivid, and delicious, though not, perhaps, to every reader’s taste.
A middle-aged widow in a small town starts her own restaurant and a scandalous love affair in this novel by the late Italian author and artist Castaldi.
Rosa learned to cook from her mother, who learned to cook from hers, “in the kitchen that was her life’s prison and salvation.” For these Italian women, food occupies a complicated place: “Only by passing down her love for making food that her mother had passed down to her did she find a crumb of eternity on this earth.” In stream-of-consciousness prose free of most punctuation, Castaldi evokes a woman resisting societal expectations, embracing her lesbianism, and practicing the domestic art of cooking. Of food Rosa says, “First it was something divine simple and natural and later became something controlled regimented and overwhelming But food conserves the nature of the ages and the wisdom of God.” Castaldi has an incantatory, experimental style and a poet’s gift for repetition and imagery. Her gastronomic details are so rich and exuberant they threaten to highjack the narrative, and Rosa’s simultaneous wooing of two local women feels less significant than her recipe for Neapolitan pastiera. A novel about women and their often unseen and unacknowledged manual labor, its strength lies less in plot than in the breadth of its vision and Castaldi’s oneiric evocation of the sensual pleasures—and importance—of food. “Accept my gift—Reader—I have fought my battle in life with food I’ve erected to the heavens cathedrals of pastry and baked longing and pleasure Accept my gift—Reader—I am only a woman I sleep alone Pause with me—Reader—in the suspended time of the eternal present in the land abandoned by God and men under the absolute immobile imploded light of things that exist even without being seen in the sea on the earth in the sky of God in the suspended time of the eternal present in infinite life.”
Unconventional, impassioned, vivid, and delicious, though not, perhaps, to every reader’s taste.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781913505868
Page Count: 256
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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