Cooking With Fernet Branca

Picked this up in a charity shop when looking for mindless books to read on holiday, and mindless this certianly was - but in a reasonably entertaining way. It is unlike any book I've ever read, and initially I wasn't sure what to make of it, but as soon as I relaxed and stopped expecting anything from the book, I found it quite amusing.
Of the two main characters, Gerald and Marta, Gerald's character seemed to be developed much more than Marta's, but possibly this is down to people usually being able to write better about their own sex? Either way, Gerald is an unusally pathetic main character, and is so at odds with Marta that to hear their different takes on the same situation is enjoyably confusing, as you try and decide what the 'real' pattern of events is most likely to have been. There are very few additional characters in the book which makes the relationship between Gerald and Marta all the more important, and if you can just suspend your disbelief about anything that is supposed to be happening and enjoy the way in which their friendship develops, then this will be a relatively entertaining book to read whilst on holiday or on a train etc. However if you're looking for something sensible, intelligent or with well developed plot-lines, best look elsewhere.

review (0/3 people found this helpful)

This is a book. All the pages have printing on them and if you can read you can make sense of it. It's very funny indeed.

Wicked, witty, wacky (1/1 people found this helpful)

I've bought this book on sale at the local library partly because it was ridiculously cheap and partly because of the hilarious narrative inside the cover of the book that made reference to 'Alien Pie' for which among many other things '1 kg smoked cat, off the bone' and '1 single drop household paraffin' were required . So, naturally I HAD to have it. I began reading on the bus and suddenly found myself missing all my stops, when I did finally arrive I could hardly wait to get home to continue with the reading and finished the book that same evening. Since then I've been re-reading the favourite bits and have developed an addiction to Fernet Branca....so I've become a much happier person as a result of this book, LOL

At last... (2/2 people found this helpful)

What a treat to read a book where the story line is driven by highly developed characters. This surely is one sign of a skilled writer. It's a bit like watching a play with no props where only the skill of the actors keeps the audience spellbound. In an era of special effects and melodrama, this is a simple story well told.

this is NOT a cookery book! (1/7 people found this helpful)

My fault - I DID read the blurb and understood that this book was going to be a humourous book but I(wrongly)assumed that somewhere in this book there would still be real recipes and real information about living in Tuscany/Italy.
Because of this I was quite dissapointed as it could have been set anywhere in Europe, just a few token descriptions of the views and although I read it to the end, I couldn't warm to any of the characters; the 'plot' just seemed a bit silly and unbelievable and I found the whole thing a bit 'thin'

James Hamilton-Paterson

Reader Reviews:

entertainingly odd (0/0 people found this helpful)

review (0/3 people found this helpful)

Wicked, witty, wacky (1/1 people found this helpful)

At last... (2/2 people found this helpful)

this is NOT a cookery book! (1/7 people found this helpful)

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