Itemize Books Supposing Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust & Forbidden Fruit
| Original Title: | Tomato Rhapsody: A Novel of Love, Lust, and Forbidden Fruit |
| ISBN: | 0385343337 (ISBN13: 9780385343336) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Adam Schell
Hardcover | Pages: 340 pages Rating: 3.72 | 729 Users | 165 Reviews
Particularize About Books Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust & Forbidden Fruit
| Title | : | Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust & Forbidden Fruit |
| Author | : | Adam Schell |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 340 pages |
| Published | : | June 23rd 2009 by Delacorte Press (first published January 1st 2009) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Cultural. Italy. Food and Drink. Food. Romance. Love |
Description To Books Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust & Forbidden Fruit
A village in Tuscany is the setting for this joyous debut—a novel that defies all our expectations as it puts a fresh, clever, captivating spin on the age-old tale of forbidden love. Rich in literary delights, filled with spectacular wordplay, and rife with the bawdy humor of Shakespeare’s comedies, Tomato Rhapsody is the almost-true tale of how the tomato came to Italy—at once a brilliantly inventive fable of love, lust, and longing, and a dazzling feast for the imagination.This is a story born from love—a forbidden love—between Davido, an Ebreo tomato farmer, and Mari, a beautiful Catholic girl.…But it’s not only Davido and Mari who have secrets of the heart. Everyone around them yearns for something—from Davido’s grandfather, who tenderly cultivates the tomato plant he stole on his voyages with Columbus, to Mari’s villainous stepfather, whose eye is trained on his stepdaughter’s virginity and his neighbor’s land.
Caught in the midst of these passions and machinations is a village full of eccentrics who speak in rhyme, celebrate the Feast of the Drunken Saint, and live a life untouched by the passage of time. The schemes and dreams of these men and women are about to change as what is forbidden becomes too delicious to resist. Tradition, religion, and good taste collide unforgettably in a story about the courage to pursue love and tomato sauce at all costs.
Rating About Books Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust & Forbidden Fruit
Ratings: 3.72 From 729 Users | 165 ReviewsEvaluate About Books Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust & Forbidden Fruit
Loved the book for all the images of delicious tomatoes, olives, red wine, sauces, figs it evoked. I could feel my mouth fill with juices ;) Always a pleasure to read about old Italy n quaint Tuscany in this one..the rhyming too did leave me inspired :)I know that I am alone in this, but I could not get into this book at all. I read the description, it sounded interesting, the reviews were great, but when it came time to read it, I felt like I had no understanding of what was going on and I wasn't that interesting in reading slow enough to find out.
This is a most unusual novel. Set in 15th century Tuscany, it's a tale of love, lust, food and life. It features broad and bawdy comedy, poignant drama, rhyming dialogue (said to be in imitation of the peasant dialect of the place and time), random Italian words and phrases, commedia dell'arte elements, authorial asides, sensual descriptions of the joys of eating a tomato and creative explanations for the origin of foods such as tomato sauce and pizza. I've noted that the book polarises opinion.
Like all good Italian operas, there is love, loss, sadness and laughter. I will never eat tomato sauce or a pizza again without thinking of the characters in this story. It is a love story, foremost, and the history (in the loosest of terms) of tomatoes in Italy. There is religion involved, as any good Italian folktale has - both Jewish & Catholic. And this is a story written to tell over and over again. If someone, after too much red wine, started to tell me this story - I would sit and
Adam Schell's comic novel, "Tomato Rhapsody," is an original paean to the Shakespearean comedy - the entire novel sings with the same gusto as Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of "Much Ado About Nothing." The sun-kissed hill-sides of Tuscany is the perfect setting for tales of comic, romantic silliness.Schell's novel revolves around the introduction of the tomato to Europe, but involves much more than that. Starting with a hilarious opening scene involving a braying donkey and its tremendous
A rousing and unforgettable fable of how the tomato came to 16th Century Italy, to a Tuscan village in which it complicated the lives of the villagers, Hebrew and Christian, noble and peasant alike. It's bawdy, it's a story of star-crossed lovers, a story that stops here and there for recipes and cultural vignettes -- as if Chaucer and Shakespeare and Julia Child had stopped off in Tuscany to jointly write a parable.And it is a parable, of change coming to a place and time, heralded by the
Interesting adventure in Italy, delicious cooking and history. The book was well written and easy to read although far from the romance and tenderness. Good sense of humor and very authentic characters.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.