Advantages: Engaging and evocative Disadvantages: A little predictable
Like Wayne Rooney (a five book deal - the mind boggles! He can't string a sentence together without a liberal sprinkling of "Erm?y'know"!), Jamie Oliver is not someone whose opinion I would seek out on works of literature. So it will come as no surprise that it was not his words of recommendation on the cover of Anthony Capella's "The Food of love" which persuaded me to purchase a copy. Whatever it was, the book sat for some time in a teeteringly dangerous skyscraper of books and was finally selected as the antidote to some rather foul weather that left me wanting a bit of escapism.
"The Food of Love" is a modern re-working of an old classic - the Cyrano de Bergerac story - you may remember this story being used in the Steve Martin movie "?". The premise is this - a young man enlists the help of a friend to win the heart of a young ...
Advantages: Evocative descriptions, wonderful characters, an engaging story Disadvantages: None
favourite part of the book and it was this that interested me in reading it the first place. I've read Capella's first two novels "The Food of Love" and "The Wedding Officer", both of which focus on food as a central theme and this author has quite a talent for conjuring up evocative images around the preparation and eating of delicious food. "The Various Flavours of Coffee" doesn't disappoint; Capella still has an incredible ability to summon up flavours and smells that bring his novels alive. Robert talks about one coffee as having "a deep, bassoprofundo note of liquorice and clove" and another "the aroma of exotic flowers filled the rooms - and not just flowers; there was lime, tobacco, even mown grass." It was really interesting to learn about the different types of coffee and how combinations are created and quite surprising to find out ...
Advantages: A modern re-working of the Cyrano de Bergerac story. Disadvantages: The men come across more vividly than the women.
don't like: I felt rather ill when offal was being described.
If you're a romantic it's a good story. Given the comparison to Cyrano de Bergerac (which the author himself makes) it's a bit predictable in places, but there are some neat twists and turns which I didn't expect. The sticking point for me with most Cyrano reworkings is that I can never see a compelling reason why the friend would help someone else to win the heart of the girl he loves. Capella manages this in such a way that I never thought Bruno could have done anything else. I thought the final part of the book was the weakest, although it did contain some good recipes. The author has a splendid ear for dialogue too. It's frequently crude, but never gratuitously so. I wouldn't recommend that you use some of the phrases should you be visiting Italy!
The characters ...
