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Tomato Rhapsody Tomato Rhapsody (2009)

by Adam Schell(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0440338611 (ISBN13: 9780440338611)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Delacorte Press

review 1: One of the best novels I've read in a while, mostly because I took a break from genre fiction. Honestly, the prose is magnificent, and from the first few chapters alone, Davido and Mari already had my heart. And like most novels that involve food and descriptions of it, this novel enticed me the same way food does."They laughed because life is nothing if not a constant reconciliation with death and sadness and loss that leaves one no choice but to laugh—to laugh or lose one's mind."
review 2: So sometimes when I'm commuting, I have to hold my kindle close to my chest to make sure no one can glance over my shoulder and see what I'm reading. I had to with Tomato Rhapsody. About halfway through this frivolous light read, the most objectionable sentence in modern... more literature rears its head."One could not simply masturbate a donkey."Be warned: this novel contains a LOT of donkey penises. Like, personally, one donkey penis is too many. But donkey cocks are responsible for a couple of major scenes in Tomato Rhapsody. I guess it'll appeal to a certain niche.Generally, this is a light and fluffy read in the style of a Shakespearean comedy. At its heart is the story of the love between a Jewish boy and a Catholic girl in 16th century Tuscany. The love isn't very believable, but then again, neither is Shakespeare's. Meanwhile, the boy's grandfather is responsible for bringing the first tomatoes to Italy, and everyone fears eating them in case they have some devious Hebrew magic involved. And there's an undercover count and his long-lost cousin, and a mysterious new priest, and a village idiot who's being abused by the evil olive oil shop owner, and a few randomly thrown-in recipes, and of course, a whole mess of donkey penises (not sure what the collective noun for donkey penises is).Some words appear in Italian, but that's just for flavour. A lot of those words are "cock". The villagers are rimaticos, which means they speak in rhyme. I found that a little tiresome, because it's jarring when it happens and jarring when it stops, and sometimes there's meter and sometimes there isn't and...well, it got messy for me.To be honest, I wasn't really enraptured by Tomato Rhapsody. The characters aren't very likeable or believable, so I wasn't invested in any of them. The story is, for the most part, quite charmingly told, but it's slight, and you know it's going to culminate in a big happy ending. It took me a while to get through, simply because I was never truly excited about reading on. It's not bad, it's just not quite good enough at what it does. less

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