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Mar 18, 2010

Lisa rated it:

A funny, edgy book. The narrator, Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, is so perfectly off-kilter -- she's both sympathetic and disconcerting, often at the same time -- that she lends a slightly funhouse feeling to the story's telling. This dynastic epic of a candy-making family encompasses immigration, assimilation, success, failure, racism, inclusion, and everything you ever wanted to know about the candy business, all skillfully interwoven. And Alice's weird, funny, almost-perfectly-reasonable voice is t More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2010

Debi rated it:

Just loved this. (And, no, it didn't take me all this time to read it, I am just slack about keeping these lists.) I've always loved how Katharine's novels have some sort of document or artifact that helps to both spin the story and give the illusion of connecting it to the real world. This time, the whole book is that artifact - a novel in deposition - and there's a lot to think about. How reliable is our narrator? How much can we really know when we only know one side of a story? What would th More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 02, 2010

Margee rated it:

This is a wonderfully nuanced and funny tale of corporate and family squabbling. Weber invents a fascinating history for the Ziplinsky candy family that is both complicated and moving.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2010

Cynthia rated it:

Interesting book. This is a great author whose novels are always different from one another.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 15, 2010

Christina rated it:

True Confections is my first introduction to Katharine Weber's writing, and what a delight it is!
As a lifetime candy-lover, I was immediately drawn in by the title, and I was thrilled to discover that the book really is about candy rather than just a cute play on "True Confessions".
But this isn't Charlie and the Chocolatae Factory (another great book, don't get me wrong). Rather than write a great fantasy about what life in the candy business is like, Katharine Weber chose More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 08, 2010

Stephanie rated it:

This was a very enjoyable read about a small family-run candy company in Connecticut and the woman who joins the family through marriage to discover not everything is as it seems. The story is told through the voice of this woman, Alice, and she is quite a character. I also enjoyed the intresting tidbits about the candy industry. Fun read.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 20, 2010

Stephanie rated it:

Since this isn't what I typically read, I had a really hard time catagorizing it. I enjoyed the book. It kept just interested enough to finish it. It jumped around a lot, but I found it very easy to follow because it jumped around the same way my own mind does. I kept thinking as I read it how I was always criticized for my tangents and here is a book written all in tangents. Maybe that is why I kept going with it even though it is not what I typically read; it reads the same way I tend to More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2011

Peggy rated it:

I've enjoyed Katherine Weber's work in the past and as candy lover True Confections was particularly fun. This is a very funny book that gets crazier and crazier as it goes along.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 09, 2011

Jeruen rated it:

Guilty pleasures. This phrase has been associated with several things that give humans satisfaction, and yet for some reason or another, is deemed to be unhealthy if taken in excess. And certainly, at one point in time, this has been applied to chocolate.

Yes, this novel revolves on several themes, chocolate being one of them. And I have to say, I enjoyed reading this novel, that by the time I read the last sentence in the last paragraph, I closed the book with that feeling of satisfact More...

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Feb 10, 2010

Gail rated it:

"How sweet it is!" TRUE CONFECTIONS is as irresistible as a box of chocolates - the story is filled with greed, love, fun, lust and the incorrigible Alice Ziplinsky. She is not a true Ziplinsky not having been born into the family but married into it. Hired fresh out of Wilbur Cross High School to work on the Zip's Candies Factory floor, Alice diligently approached her tasks in the summer of 1975.

On her first day at work after five minutes she had just about mastered the ar More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2010

Tattered Cover added it

Jackie says:

The protagonist in True Confections, Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, is not the easiest person to like. She's got her quirks, but she clearly cares a great deal about her family. And perhaps even more so the family business, which is a small family run candy factory that has a complicated back-story, inspired by Little Black Sambo, a children's book that leads to no small amount of the hilarity in this novel. True Confections is written as an affidavit, the reasons for which sl More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 23, 2011

Kari rated it:

This is an extremely fun book. I was drawn to it by the cover (it sticks out!), and was hooked about five pages in. The storytelling is wonderful. It's rich and real, and very nearly feels like a true account of things. Katharine Weber is gifted with descriptions; I was right there with Alice when she smelled the licorice burnt-sugar smell of the factory for the first time. The characters are well-rounded, and the story flows really well for something with so much back-and-forth between the pres More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 05, 2011

Larry added it

Have you ever imagined what it might be like to work in a candy factory? Not like the Willy Wonka-kind, or the Lucy and Ethel chocolate assembly line in I Love Lucy, but a real (albeit fictional) candy factory? Katharine Weber's True Confections provides a glimpse into that world. The book tells the story of Alice Ziplinsky, who marries into the family that owns relatively-famous Zip's Candies. Alice spends the book chronicling the history of Zip's Candies and the challenges faced in the world o More...

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Jan 23, 2010

Cordel rated it:

Who should read this book? Well, if you like mysteries, this has something for you. If you enjoy gossipy novels, this has something for you, too. You like family sagas? Yes, this is the story of four generations of a candy maker's family, albeit through the eyes of a delightfully unreliable narrator. Are you curious about candy-making, about small business, about the role of Jewish immigrants in modern America? Weber's book includes all of these. With such a mishmash, can the book be inte More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 02, 2011

Tracey rated it:

This is a confectionary dark family secrets delight. Alice Tatnall was in the top 10% of her HS class, college bound & planning a career in writing when she suddenly has her admission rescinded after an unfortunate accidental arsenal fire. Now locally known as "fire girl" and estranged from family and friends, unemployable and alone she stumbles upon Zips Candie's, a Jewish imigrant family owned business where she finds a new life. The book is written as a affidavit, chronologically te More...

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Feb 07, 2010

Ashlie added it

I received "True Confections" as a goodreads giveaway and was excited to have it. I mean, who doesn't love free books? The honest reason why I entered the giveaway because the description said that the writer's talent was respected by many authors, one of which was Madeleine L'Engle and I figure if it was good enough for L'Engle, it was CERTAINLY good enough for me!

At first I didn't like this book very much. The style is not linear and the narrator jumps around a lot in More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2010

skein rated it:

It's terribly complicated to review a Weber novel. They are not straightforward. Oh, it's easy enough to write a blurb (courtroom documents of divorce/will case involving chocolate tycoon) -- but there are layers and layers and layers of plot, stirred together in a careful mix (temperature + time, plus a little salt). It's brilliant and enjoyable, and it's what makes me return over and over again, but how the hell do you explain something so encompassing?
Every time I read one of her books More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2010

Bookmarks Magazine rated it:

With her fifth novel, Katharine Weber delivers another comic, sad, and highly inventive storyline. Critics enjoyed learning about Alice Ziplinsky, whose multi-layered personality, revealed slowly through her imperfect narration, made for some fascinating reading. They were slightly less enamored with the extensive candy history lesson, which several reviewers found over-long and tiresome. Minor quibbles aside, True Confections was hailed as a compelling story of race, religion, candy, and one wo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 18, 2011

Susie rated it:

This is a tour de force of tongue in cheek wit. I thoroughly enjoyed Alice Tatnall's "affidavit" and history of the Ziplinsky candy making family. Alice tells her story completely with enough clues about her life and the Ziplinskys that help you understand you need to take what she is saying with a grain of salt. As an 18 year old, she is convicted of arson, burning down a classmate's house, which she says all along was a mistake. Yet it is enough to make you pay good attention to what More...

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Aug 02, 2010

Marilyn rated it:

This witty novel, written as an affidavit by Alice Ziplinsky, who has married into a family of Hungarian immigrants and their family-owned candy company, is funny, informative and engaging. The story of Zip's Candy (inspired by a stolen copy of Little Black Sambo which helped the founder of the company learn English) is so detailed and so convincing, that I almost believed I could find Little Sammies and Tigermelts at the grocery store. In fact, the author has a real website for this fake comp More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 24, 2010

Sarah rated it:

The secrets of the candy industry, seen from the inside out (particularly smaller companies rather than the big three). Great book. Since I've read Candy Freak, I could tell how well researched the book was, although the book never seemed researchy-- it was seamlessly woven into the narrative. I liked that the narrator was occasionally untrustworthy; for the most part you took her as a reliable chronicler of the family candy business, but then she'd mention something like, "From what I coul More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 08, 2011

Elizabeth added it

Funny, with a few genuinely tragic moments (the scene with Arson Girl's stalker, for instance). I especially enjoyed the relationship between the narrator and her self-absorbed sister in law, though I could have done with less on WW II and Madagascar stuff, as well as the rather in-depth history of candy companies. Also--Howard is so unlikeable, it was hard for me to see why Alice missed him. Finally, for the first two-thirds of the novel, Alice comes across as an extremely reliable narrator-- More...

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Aug 23, 2010

Amanda rated it:

I got all the way through this book, and by the end, I still wasn't sure if I liked it or not. It made me uncomfortable not knowing if the protagonist was actually supposed to be the antagonist or if she was crazy or completely sane. Some people call that clever, which I guess it is, but I found it disorienting.

I also felt like it was written in kind of a blog-style: non-linear, choppy, quirky, full of inside information (because we're supposed to know the characters before we read More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 06, 2010

Kelly-lynn rated it:

I won Katharine Weber's novel "True confections" through Goodread's First Read's giveaway section. It came packaged with little true confections wrapped candies. Completely unknown to me before hand, the story takes place in a city quite close to my hometown, giving it a very familiar feel right away. Weber's novel is like watching a food channel special on candy production mixed with a reality TV hell where a family bickers and feuds within each other, with chocolate tidbits and facts More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 24, 2010

Becky rated it:

"...a story of love, betrayal and chocolate." Who could ask for anything more? Alice Tatnall, known as Arson Girl as the result of an unfortunate accident involving a water pistol filled with lighter fluid and a charcoal grill, goes to work for the Ziplinsky Candy Company at age 18 and discovers her calling. Since the entire book is in the form of her legal affidavit the reader is immediately tipped off that there is something going on that is only gradually revealed. Learned lots o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 21, 2010

Lois rated it:

Just started it last night and it has sucked me into the vortex. I think this is going to be a good one.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 29, 2010

Chris rated it:

An example of a protagonist with a distinctive voice: that middle-aged/older woman who has her own opinions and is reasonably smart but has no idea how difficult she is to live and work with nor does seeing annoying characteristics in other people give her any insight into her own effects on others. Sound fun yet? Actually the narrator's voice makes the book work and people like me who are into candy and chocolate will be rewarded because the author has clearly done her homework. There are lo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 04, 2010

Jonna rated it:

An entire book the saga of a small family candy factory. I expected it to make me hungry; what I didn't expect was to be bored. I read the entire novel waiting for something to happen, and in spite of all the past intrigue (arson, infidelity, possible industrial espionage and even accusations of racism), this is a deeply dull book. The narrator/main charactor, Alice is annoying, and I understood why she has no friends!
The best thing about "True Confections" are the descriptions o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 16, 2010

Rose rated it:

Living in New Haven makes this book extra-fun to read, since it's set there. Reading about meetings at Clark's Dairy and happenings on Whitney Ave made this book a little bit more special to me.

Told from the point of view of Alice, a woman who marries into the Zip's Candies family (the factory is on River St), we learn about chocolate making, the candy history of some US companies and all the nutty stories of the Ziplinsky family.

Alice is an erratic narrator, but keeps you in More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 25, 2010

Margarita rated it:

This was a fun book to read, in fact, I had to wait long to get it from the library and the time was worth it! It is an unusual story of what on the surface is a depiction of a typical American small family business. This family, and the business itself, turns out to be far from ordinary, to say the least! First of all, the said business has to do with chocolate - somewhat of an obsession with many, and a potential source of strong opinion, snobbery and outright war waging too! Secondly, the far More...

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