Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
31st out of 271 books
—
123 voters
La Cucina: A Novel of Rapture
by
Lily Prior
Since childhood, Rosa Fiore -- daughter of a sultry Sicilian matriarch and her hapless husband -- found solace in her family's kitchen. La Cucina, the heart of the family's lush estate, was a place where generations of Fiore women prepared sumptuous feasts and where the drama of extended family life was played out around the age-old table.
When Rosa was a teenager, her own...more
When Rosa was a teenager, her own...more
Paperback, 263 pages
Published
September 18th 2001
by Harper Perennial
(first published 2000)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
1,530)
I felt like I needed to include a book I didn't like. I really, really, really disliked this book. The author peppers the story with Italian words, but never really captures Italian culture. She resorts to some tired stereotypes - the ignorant peasant girl, the possessive father who uses the words "dishonor" and "puttana" way too much, the fat middle-aged woman, the Mafia taking out a foreigner, etc. This left me cold. I couldn't sympathize with the characters because they were so two-dimensiona...more
La Cucina was a quick and engaging read that I enjoyed quite a bit.
The tale follows the life and loves of Rosa Fiore whose gifts with food were legendary in her Sicilian village and expressed her passions and sensuality in a socially appropriate way. After a tragedy occurs in her home village, Rosa sets off to Palermo and becomes a librarian where, 25 years later, she meets L'Inglese and ignited by a passion for him and for life that transforms her.
Without giving away the plot, this story was f...more
The tale follows the life and loves of Rosa Fiore whose gifts with food were legendary in her Sicilian village and expressed her passions and sensuality in a socially appropriate way. After a tragedy occurs in her home village, Rosa sets off to Palermo and becomes a librarian where, 25 years later, she meets L'Inglese and ignited by a passion for him and for life that transforms her.
Without giving away the plot, this story was f...more
"...we sucked and sucked at one another, paddling with our hungry tongues."
This is one of the worst books I've ever read. It alternated between cliche, trite, badly written, and ridiculous. If the author could have focused solely on the cooking, culture, and crime aspects of the novel, it would have been half decent in spite of the total abuse of punctuation (averaging 2 comma errors per page).
However, the romance portions of the book were absolutely atrocious. Many of the interactions between...more
This is one of the worst books I've ever read. It alternated between cliche, trite, badly written, and ridiculous. If the author could have focused solely on the cooking, culture, and crime aspects of the novel, it would have been half decent in spite of the total abuse of punctuation (averaging 2 comma errors per page).
However, the romance portions of the book were absolutely atrocious. Many of the interactions between...more
Sep 20, 2011
Ape
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
france-italy-spain-portugal
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Drenched in the sensuality that accompanies a true passion for food, we meet the protagonist Rosa Fiore. Lonely, desperate for love without knowing it, Lily sublimates her sensual nature into a love for food. Her food preparations are elaborate and the descriptions of them just heavenly. But romance truly blossoms when L’Inglese enters the picture. The reader is inundated with truly smoldering entries of Rosa’s romance with this mysterious man who clearly revels in food and good eating as much a...more
After reading Lily Prior´s novel " Nectar" years ago, I do not profess myself as her fan as I didn´t like it at all. But I came across "La Cucina" in a charity sale and decided to buy it and give it a try , at least for charity´s sake. Well, as I was already aware what to expect from Ms. Prior and perhaps that´s the reason I found this novel (her debut) much better than " Nectar". Nonetheless, don´t think this is Laura Esquivel or Joanne Harris . Unfortunately, though Ms.Prior tries , it lacks f...more
This felt like an Italian Like Water for Chocolate, which I also gave four stars. A woman deals with a demanding and domineering mother (and a slew of brothers). Lots of food and cooking is involved, and the passion that stems from the culinary activities extends into sexual activities, and vice-versa. I especially liked that the main character became a librarian, though portraying her as the stereotypical dowdy sort of library worker did not please me, heh.
It's a light and easy read with a dose...more
It's a light and easy read with a dose...more
(copied review) When 18-year-old Rosa's first love comes to a terrible end, she takes to cooking to ease her grief, but eventually leaves her rural Sicilian town for the city of Palermo. Twenty-five years later she has become a librarian, and still lives to cook. But the overweight, overlooked Rosa doesn't truly come back to life until she meets a man who comes to her library for research, but who falls in love with Rosa and her flair for cooking. All goes well (better than well, in fact, for sh...more
This was a great story.
Centered around a Sicilian woman - Rosa Fiore - "La Cucina" outlines her life. She leaves home after her first love affair ends in tragedy and lives for twenty five years on her own. She meets a man - l'Inglese - who helps awaken her from her sexual hibernation and she learns to love again.
Rosa finds solace in her kitchen - so be prepared to find delicious descriptions of the dishes she prepares throughout the story.
For a full review of this book please visit my blog at...more
Centered around a Sicilian woman - Rosa Fiore - "La Cucina" outlines her life. She leaves home after her first love affair ends in tragedy and lives for twenty five years on her own. She meets a man - l'Inglese - who helps awaken her from her sexual hibernation and she learns to love again.
Rosa finds solace in her kitchen - so be prepared to find delicious descriptions of the dishes she prepares throughout the story.
For a full review of this book please visit my blog at...more
I read this book several years ago and lost track of it (loaned it out several times and was past from friend to friend) I found it again recently and loved it just as much the second time. It has again started the friend circuit. An messy and uncommon love story, love of self, food, cooking and family. Not a book for people who don't like different foods to touch on their plates. It is a book for lusty foodies who can tolerate an unabashed love of food and all of it's meanings and uses (other t...more
Definitely a page turner: I read it in less than three hours. However, I didn't enjoy it as the love interest's personality was repellent. For example, "[he] waved me ahead of him up the spiral staircase. I had reached halfway before I realized that he had positioned himself directly underneath and was looking up my skirts. I tried to gather the material close around my legs so he could not see anything, but in truth, he had already seen everything. He smiled broadly at my discomfort." Urgh. Als...more
L’histoire
La Cucina se passe au début du 20e siècle. C’est l’histoire de Rosa, une jeune italienne qui adore faire la cuisine. Elle soulage ses inquiétudes, ses joies, ses colères etc. en faisant à manger pour sa famille et elle-même. Lorsque son amoureux est assassiné, elle quitte sa campagne natale pour aller vivre sa vie en ville. Elle y passera près de 25 ans de sa vie comme bibliothécaire. À l’aube de ses 25 ans de service, elle rencontre un étranger avec lequel s’ensuivra une relation myst...more
La Cucina se passe au début du 20e siècle. C’est l’histoire de Rosa, une jeune italienne qui adore faire la cuisine. Elle soulage ses inquiétudes, ses joies, ses colères etc. en faisant à manger pour sa famille et elle-même. Lorsque son amoureux est assassiné, elle quitte sa campagne natale pour aller vivre sa vie en ville. Elle y passera près de 25 ans de sa vie comme bibliothécaire. À l’aube de ses 25 ans de service, elle rencontre un étranger avec lequel s’ensuivra une relation myst...more
It may be stereotypical, but being half Italian and having lived in Italy for 2 years, I know the stereotypes are justified!
It was tasty and sexy, but above all, very sweet.
I loved that the main character and her lover weren't gorgeous and they smothered each other in food and had regular rampant sex! It was quite gross, yet erotic at the same time.
The food and the mafia and the morals made it, sopratutto, an Italian story.
I really enjoyed this. It makes reading fun as it should be.
It was tasty and sexy, but above all, very sweet.
I loved that the main character and her lover weren't gorgeous and they smothered each other in food and had regular rampant sex! It was quite gross, yet erotic at the same time.
The food and the mafia and the morals made it, sopratutto, an Italian story.
I really enjoyed this. It makes reading fun as it should be.
This book was over the top cliche, and too raunchy for my taste.... Yet, I did finish it and found it about 3 stars of fun reading. I liked all the cooking with the main character but there was too much meat and slaughtering descriptions, it really grossed me out. Also, there was a very graphic and disgusting chapter where the main character and her lover were smearing food (meat sauce and oysters) all over each other. Eeeewwww! Yucky!
Wow, had no idea really what this book was about and read it as a book club pick. As a young girl growing up on a Sicilian farm in the 50's Rosa falls in love and soon after her lover is killed. Fast forward 25 years and Rosa, who has used food and cooking as her comfort and love, falls in love once again. This is a very fast read and prepare for some sex scenes, not a 50 Shades of Grey, but definitely some shades of it:)
Such mixed feelings about this book. Should I recommend it to my daughter? (LOL!) A sumptuous feast of food and sexuality that took me back to Like Water for Chocolate in a way, but not as perfect a book. On the other hand, I really enjoyed it and found myself smiling a lot - not wanting to put it down. A quick, entertaining read overall that makes me want to hop on a plane to Sicily NOW (for the food... )
The beginning was a lot move eventful and well thought-out than the rest of the book, which was mostly tales of Rosa, the heroine, and her foreign lover's sexual adventures. The novel is sprinkled with descriptions of lavish Sicilian recipes, which Rosa gives names to in her language and then doesn't explain in English. She had a sad life: After losing her father and her first love when she was young, she falls into a depression and starts arguing with her mother. She leaves home to live twenty-...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
If you liked "Like Water for Chocolate" you will love this book. Here is another daughter beset by tragedy who cooks her way through her sorrow. The setting (Sicily) makes this book particularly appealing to me as I lived in Italy for a year. Sensuality abounds in this lovely little book about love, life and of course the pleasures of cooking good food.
This was BRILLIANT. The whole time I was reading it I was blown away... it wasn't just food porn, some how, it was porn food. The whole book was spent cooking and fucking, and then fucking and cooking, and then, they might fuck while they cooked, or cook while they fucked. I gobbled it up in under 24hrs, and I wanted more.
This book was so great, until the end. The story was developed well, the author's linguistic crafting was great, and the imagery was vivid. But, then the story ended more abruptly than if it were hit by a Mack truck. I was ready to add Prior to my list of fav authors, until I read the last two pages of the book. I was so disappointed!
Nothing actually happened in this book. There was far too much second person narration (of which there should never be any, honestly). It didn't really capture anything special about italian culture, and actually put me off eating some of the dishes as they ate them off of eachother. Spaghetti in your hair actually does not sound delicious or sensual, just dirty and hairy. And it made me gag a little. I was not in rapture by the end of this anticlimactic, antinarrative book.
A quirky and sometimes bizarre little novel. A light read, humorous at times. I enjoyed it as a change of pace from the types of novels I usually read, but also can see why I usually don't read this type of work. As a change of pace - fine. As a steady diet - too many calories from fat.
Interesting book. At first I was worried it was going to be a rip-off of Like Water For Chocolate ( a fabulous book)but as the story developed it was quite different. Rosa's life has always revolved around food, and the food intertwines itself in her relationships. A quick read that I would recommend to anyone who doesn't mind some sex, and likes a well-written novel.
I enjoyed the book and the effect of being transported to Sicily made it addictive to read. I actually thought the book could have been beefed up a bit and the mafia storyline developed more? I wasn't totally satisfied with the end? But overall I enjoyed the book.
A while back, I suggested this book for book club. I did not like it at all. I thought the writing was not very good and it seemed like a semi-porno book. I did not get this book at all. (Shelley may recall this one - I am sure she does! :)
I love this book. It's my second reading of it and I loved it just as much this time. It's sensuous in a way that's totally straightforward, at times funny and not at all precious. I will likely read it again in another five years or so.
Brilliant Read! If you like books that descibe food preperation with such lust and passion this is a book for you! It takes you away to what I call an adult fairytale and keeps your imagination from front cover to back!
Spicy! Makes you hungry for more than just food. :-) With all the references to the main character's Rubenesque figure, I don't understand why the publisher featured a slim woman on the cover. A quick, fun read.
Picked this one up from a shelf of free books. The blurb says, "family, food, passion, and the eternal rapture of romance" ...what could be better! Also intrigued by the one-star and five-star ratings this has encouraged on this site.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
