Customer Reviews

La Cucina: A Novel of Rapture

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

After reading the customer reviews of this book, I have decided that a simple, summing up would be "to each his/her own". I, personally, thoroughly enjoyed this book. I found it to be engrossing yet simple to read. The imagery presented by the author was quite realistic -- while I might not have wanted to know the process of killing the hog, I felt it only helped to complete the story. The sights and sounds of Rosa's experiences were lifelike. I was a fly on the wall in every scene.

"La Cucina" has inspired me to pursue Italian cooking. I found that I could "taste" the dishes being prepared by Rosa. As the dishes developed and ripened, so did Rosa. As the dishes got more involved to prepare, so did Rosa's awareness and development of herself. One reviewer spoke of not understanding the purpose of the divisions of the book -- Spring, Summer, Winter and Fall. If looked at as Rosa's life and her development as a person, it fits.

I highly recommend this book to all and I am looking forward to Lily Prior's next work.

La Cucina is a clever, deliciously, wonderfully sexy book. Prior did an excellent job of protraying the Sicilian lifestyle and traditions, in the engaging story of one Rosa Fiore.This book carries you from hilarity to sympathy and tears, back to joy once more. I loved the odd eccentricity of the various characters, there is so much imagination and emotion involved. This was the most interesting read that I've experienced in quite awhile. I would recommend this book to anyone with a grand sense of humor, who can appreciate great food, sex and yes, even a little intrigue.

Following brilliantly in the romantic, senusal writing styles of Laura Esquivel, Isabel Allende, and Joanne Harris, with their equal flair and cache for magical realist nibbles, Lily Prior has created an unforgettable woman in her hot and voluptuous librarian named Rosa Fiore. From her agrarian roots in the sunswept Sicilian countryside, learning to cook in more than one sense of the word, to her rare books librarian days, when she meets L'Inglese, the mysterious Englishman who releases her oceans of pent-up passion, Rosa is a complex and loveable human being, despite her many quirks and foibles. The story is consummately readable and lots of fun; the prose drips with all the sensability (no, this is NOT Jane Austen!) of olive oil and tomato sauce in its richness and savory flavors. The few sex scenes (not in the least gratuituous and again immaculately written) are erotic, without being pornographic and hot, hot, hot. A highly literate romp through the kitchen.

This book is so refreshing! It's a very engaging, believable story of love in Sicily in the early part of the last century... I have sometimes wondered what it would be like for an author to take on writing a realistic love story about a middle aged, overweight "matron" and Lily Prior has done a fabulous job of writing a heroine that just leaps out of the pages...

And if you love food and love sex! Well, it's delicious and steamy and highly erotic to hear all the descriptions of the creations our heroine prepares... So enjoy! (I think I put on weight just reading about the food!)

This is possibly the worst novel I have read in decades. The characters are either silly cartoonish sterotypes dreamed up by an apparently ignorant foreigner or just plain bizarre. Yet I don't think the book was intended as pure farce. It's pretentious enough to be sprinkled with totally unnecessary and distracting fragments of sentences in "Italian," but so sloppy that the "Italian" is not even written correctly. (And no, these so-called Italian sentences aren't in correct Sicilian either. They're just an incorrect mess.) The plot is crudely constructed, the writing is clumsy, the characters silly, the dialogue just terrible, and all in all, it reads like a young teen's first attempt at creative writing. Was there no editor? Awful, awful trash.

I listened to the audio version of the book via Audible.com. The narrator, Lisa Passero, was fantastic, and probably makes this book better on audio. The book had value, as there were very good parts, but overall was uneven and the ending, hmmm@#%.... At any rate, without any great expectations, it was worth the 6 hour listen. The descriptions of the food were exquisite (and the depictions of the slaughtering of animals for feasts were perfectly appropriate for the setting, except to those willy-nilly antiseptic reviewers who should remain in their hole so as to be safely removed from the realities of the food chain).

Moreover, beyond the food, the descriptions of the relationships were truly enjoyable and often salacious for this male reader (who believes that this book would be enjoyed even more so by female readers). I have to comment on Aidan from London's review that some of the author's use of dialogue is laughable as "she refers to her lovers organ as a 'willy'. Willy??? Are we talking about adults here?" Well, Aidan, maybe you're just too adult for the rest of us - here in Chicago among my group of educated bohemian friends in there 40s, willy is a commonly used term. More importantly, the character Rosa was in a playful mood when she thinks this phase to herself, which for me seems perfectly appropriate.

Overall, this is a lighthearted and frequently lively read/listen, but is not quite Like Water for Chocolate.

Prior describes the art of Sicilian cooking with such detail that aromas and tastes seem to leap off the page. Beyond that, however, I found the plot disappointing. Some events in the story line seem contrived, others seems to be included only to add a surprising twist, with no relevance to the story. Most of the characters are one-dimensional, with the exception of Rosa. Many of the characters are not fully developed. I found this to be a mediocre read.

La Cucina was filled with such detailed descriptions of wonderous Italian food that you could almost smell it, taste it. That part Lily Prior did very well. I was really enjoying it until Rosa went away and became... a librarian. I must agree with Bonnie Smothers of Booklist here. It was very tiresome to read about Rosa the librarian. At least there was no tightly bound hair with pencils sticking out of it. If the author was going to rely so much on stereotype, why didn't she just put Rosa in a bakery? Everyone knows that fat people eat all the time, what better place for a fat person than in a place where she could stuff herself all day. Okay, I'm being sarcastic now, sorry. And the ending. The ending! No, I'm not going to reveal the ending. But boy what a disappointment. I got the impression that the author lost complete interest herself at this point and just ended the thing. So, if you still really want to read this, go get it at the library. That way you won't waste any money.

This book is about Rosa, a girl with a passion for cooking, who leaves her farm and large Sicilian family to work in the city as a librarian. The first half of the book shows Rosa from about age 12 to 17 on the family farm and focuses on her family and the boy she loved. The second half jumps to age 42 as Rosa is a spinster librarian in the big city where she meets an Englishman and love of her life.

Pros: I really liked the author's voice. She had a unique, compelling and humorous story-telling style that was fun to read. She had a lot of funny lines and situations that stayed with me. I enjoyed the main character Rosa and the colorful supporting characters such as her mother, her landlady and her boyfriend. I really wanted to read what happened and finish the story.

Cons: The first half is confusing as it jumps around in time and it's hard to tell what age she is or what is happening. You don't really know why Rosa is cooking fanatically, or what the rift is about with her family. You don't get a description of Bartolomeo and there is way too much back story in the first half.

The POV is first person, but in two scenes, one involving Bertolomeo's family and one involving his intended Sophia, the author uses third person, which is sloppy. At about p. 200 she uses an "it was just a fantasy" cheat to dismiss the events in a chapter -- a "bad, author, bad" pet peeve of mine. The ending needed another chapter to explain the events of the last page and I felt unsatisfied that I didn't have any explanation.

Overall, I forgave this book its structural, POV and other faults because I liked the author's style a lot, but it really needed one more draft. This is a first novel, I think, and hopefully the problems will improve with successive novels, because the voice is there and is very entertaining.

La Cuncina was a delightful read. We follow the life of Rosa, who is a master cook growing up on a prosperous Sicilian farm. At 18, her lover is murdered and Rosa in her grief cooks and cooks. Her first person account of this is absolutely hilarious. Eventually, Rosa goes to Palermo and becomes a staid librarian for a quarter century. Then an English gentleman and chef comes to the library to do research and both he and Rosa are smitten. Their following affair is really something to read--spicy but not lurid. Throughout the story, author, Lily Prior, throws in some magical realism that ups the pleasure of this yummy read. Recommended for when you want something fun but not flat and ordinary.