Customer Reviews

Cooking With Fernet Branca

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Readers accustomed to those travel stories whereby foreigners fall in love with a tumbledown old house in France or Italy and then lovingly restore it with the help of a bunch of well meaning but unreliable locals will love this new novel.

Essentially a satire on the travel memoir genre, 'Cooking' is the story of Gerald and Marta, a pair of ill matched neighbours who live in a tiny village in the Tuscan hills. He is a English snob who ghostwrites for a living and cooks implausible recipes (thoughtfully included, but not recommended!!) as a vocation. Marta is an East European composer of film scores.

The story is told be each of the characters in turn (each in the first person) as their lives become increasingly and reluctantly intertwined.

You will guess the ending long before it arrives, but it won't matter at all. You'll be laughing too hard to care!

Beautifully written and highly recommended.

I opened this one with trepidation after avoiding it for quite awhile. I heard about it thru' a Booker Prize programme on a BBC (UK) channel, in which "ordinary folk" were given the duty of reading every book on the Booker Prize long list, to see if their choices tallied with the judges as to who made it onto the short list.

This was the one book that all the ordinary reviewers agreed on as being a pure delight to read. I tend to the view that all Booker books are so very "literary", with such scant regard to minor details as interesting characters, plot and story progresssion as to be near unreadable. So this was SUCH a pleasant surprise (as was the eventual winner "The Line Of Beauty" another recommended, highly readable novel.)

So acidly funny that I laughed out loud frequently and raced thru' it to (regretfully) finish the novel in two days.

The characters of Gerry and Marta are complete grotesques and the satirical and accurate sideswipes at such targets as pretentious film directors, modern "celebrities" and the Tuscan idyll memoir are mordantly witty. A joy!

Best thing about the book is the dual perspective it is written from - alternate sections are written in the first person of two different people, Gerald, a ghostwriter, and Marta, a film music composer. They start off thinking the worst of each other, by and by modifying their opinions only slightly - thinking the other is a well-meaning but blundering, drunken fool.

It is an outrageously comic commentary on a wide variety of subjects such as filmmaking, possible explanations for UFO-sightings, rebels from ex-Soviet bloc countries, and so on.

Gerald being a self-professed "great cook" creates these ridiculous tongue-in-cheek recipes like "Chocolate coated and deep-fried mussels" with a perfectly straight face. Extraordinary quantities of Fernet Branca, a bitter Italian liqueur, is drunk throughout by all the characters, and all of Gerald's recipes contain Fernet Branca, giving the book its incongruous title.

I don't know about the serious work of James Hamilton-Paterson, but this totally entertaining book is gorgeously written, with such a lavish attention to the craft of writing that some people might think he wasted staggering amounts of talent on fluff. But there's the mark of a fantastic writer -- he obviously has staggering amounts of talent to waste. Eloquently crafted, paragraph after paragraph, so entertaining and so beautifully written you are moved to tears of laughter and nearly speechless appreciation for the gift of what you're reading. The description of Alien Pie and the ultimate experience of its consumption must be the high point of the book, although I haven't finished it yet, so there could be something even better in store.

The story is a scream.Best thing about the book is the dual perspective it is written from - alternate sections are written in the first person of two different people, Gerald, a ghostwriter, and Marta, a film music composer. They start off thinking the worst of each other, by and by modifying their opinions only slightly - thinking the other is a well-meaning but blundering, drunken fool.

The characters of Gerry and Marta are complete grotesques and the satirical and accurate sideswipes at such targets as pretentious film directors, modern "celebrities" and the Tuscan idyll memoir are mordantly witty. A joy!

I don't even know how to start to praise this sly, witty, absolutely brilliant send-up of all books "Tuscany," all cookbooks ever written, all travelogues post-Pepys (and maybe even him) and modern life in general.

Here we have a disaffected Brit, self-satisfied fortyish Gerald Samper, whose job it is to ghost-write autobiographies of egregious celebrities from the sports world. Repairing to Tuscany and buying what he thinks is a secluded house, Gerald settles down to write and to pursue his two REAL avocations: cooking (and the recipes are unlike any you are ever likely to see, from smoked cat to udders with butterscotch sauce, listed with a completely straight face) and singing opera.

Into Gerald's idyll comes an unlikely neighbor: Marta, from a fictional Slavic country--she of the wiry hair dutifully brushed each night with goose grease, large peasant body and strange eastern european tastes...such as kasha dumplings the size of a small planet, washed down, of course, with the ubiquitous "Fernet Branca," rather lethal in its effect.

Marta is a composer, hired to write the score for a Fellini-like director who may or may not be creating the porn film of all time--nobody is sure.

Alternating voices, the author takes us into the decidedly strange minds of Gerald and Marta, first one and then the other, as we see events unfold from each of their points of view.

I could hardly read for laughing, there were times when I laughed until the tears came. I cannot recommend this incredibly brilliant romp highly enough. Do yourself a favor and read it while sipping some wine...and possibly dining on fresh otter. Always a treat!

Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson is a hilarious and original novel telling of a modern celebrity ghostwriter, Gerald Samper, and his obscure exploration of the culinary arts. Following Samper through his recent writing of a young teen idol, Cooking With Fernet Branca engages readers into the coincidental and consistent meeting of the newly arrived Marta, the runaway from an ex-soviet republic and her terrible family, and Gerald as their lives as the two protagonists progressively connect. Skillfully crafted, wryly humorous, and showcasing the author's unique wit, Cooking With Fernet Branca is very highly recommended to all readers searching for a highly intricate comedy and entirely random collection of some of the most unpleasant foods and culinary ideas yet to have been included in literature.

James Hamilton-Paterson said in an interview that he wanted to write a book that could be tossed away as soon as it was finished. His ambition has been fully realized. Read and savor this priceless novel and then throw it into the trash along with a couple empty bottles of Fernet. I don't think I've read a sillier book than this one. It raises irrelevance to an art form. More please!

I found Cooking with Fernet Branca in my rented villa during my honeymoon last week. I was laughing out loud and sputtering in Italian - which I don't speak - for days. I only have six pages left and I am dragging it out to last as long as possible. BRAVA!!!

The story is a scream. Told from two differing perspectives of two transplanted neighbours in Tuscany. The author's expressive writing on fictitious recipes gives you the urge to want to try smoked cat with of course, a dash of Fernet Branca! My only complaint was in reaching the last page.