THE FOOD TASTER

Name: THE FOOD TASTER
Author: Ugo DiFonte
ISBN: 1-57962-047-7

by Ugo DiFonte & translated by Peter Elbling ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

Perhaps miracles are all we poor mortals have to forestall untimely ends, but in fiction one hopes for something more...

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Screenwriter Elbling (Honey I Blew Up the Kids)—in disguise here as translator—offers up a clever tale, set in 16th-century Italy, of a peasant-turned-food-taster who survives by his wits, as well as by luck and a few twists of the incredible.

As a boy in rural Tuscany, Ugo watched his mother hang herself rather than die of the plague; later, his wife died in childbirth, leaving him to raise their daughter Miranda. His life might have met an equally brutish end were it not for the fact that Duke Federico, the local lord, on the point of impaling Ugo just for sport, was reminded that he had recently done away his food taster and needed a replacement. Thus elevated to an essential part of the Duke’s retinue, Ugo pulls through intrigues and attempted poisonings of the family of Federico’s wife, all the while protecting his beautiful, budding Miranda from defilers. But when the plague visits and carries off the Duke’s favorite whore, among countless others, Federico decides a change is in order and journeys to Milan in search of a new wife. There, Ugo falls in love with a fellow taster, the only woman to hold the job, but in his cleverness he persuades his peers that he survives by witchcraft, thereby enriching his master while increasing his own exposure to danger. The wife-search having failed, Federico returns home, where Ugo is horrified as his older brother, previously a bloodthirsty bandit, suddenly appears in court to exert a Rasputin-like influence over the Duke. When Federico selects Miranda as his bride-to-be, what lies ahead for Ugo is a disaster that nothing short of divine intervention can prevent.

Perhaps miracles are all we poor mortals have to forestall untimely ends, but in fiction one hopes for something more plausible.

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 1-57962-047-7

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.