The Unexpected Salami: A Novel

by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

It was your basic band video shoot, with the lead singer of the Tall Poppies, lime green makeup in place, wailing into the camera, “I’m bent and distorted, like a gnome I’m contorted.”

An aging band on the verge, the Tall Poppies were still looking for their big break in the crapshoot known as the music business. So when their drummer was gunned down right in the middle of the video—and the murder caught on camera—they weren’t too unhappy about seeing themselves on TV screens all around the world.

Our heroine, Rachel Ganelli, a self-confessed band moll (and witness to the shooting), had headed for Australia to escape a pending marriage, a mundane job, and her endlessly meddling parents. But finding herselfe on the perimeter of the murder, she heeds her mother’s advice, just this once, and returns to New York, where life is more predictable. Or so she expects.

Before she even has time to take a deep breath of city air, Rachel’s sense of what really happened back in Australia spins wildly out of control—and Rachel’s life right along with it. As she struggles to sort it out, her parents manage, once again, to insert themselves into the middle of it all. And on top of that, she still hasn’t figured out how she feels about Colin, the bass player she thought she’d left behind.

Part black comedy, part love story, The Unexpected Salami reveals Laurie Gwen Shapiro as a fresh, new master of slapstick.

Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit

297 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Laurie Gwen Shapiro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York, The Daily Beast, Lapham’s Quarterly, Slate, Aeon, The Forward, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her documentary film awards include an Independent Spirit Award for directing IFC’s Keep the River on Your Right, and an Emmy nomination for HBO’s Finishing Heaven. Shapiro is the 2022 winner of the Silurians Press Awards Gold Medallion for Best People Profile for “He Bombed the Nazis, Outwitted the Soviets and Modernized Christmas” for The New York Times and the 2021 winner of Best NYC Essay or Article from the GANYC Apple Awards for “The Improbable Journey of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes” for The New Yorker. The Stowaway (Simon & Schuster) was her best selling first full-length work of nonfiction, and was an Indie next selection. Her next nonfiction book will be The Aviator and the Showman, for Viking Books. July 2025.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this one up at a church bazaar purely based on the title. Was an unexpected hoot! Quite delightful, fun pace, oddball characters. Wrapped up a little neatly for my taste at the very end, but overall was very enjoyable. Good summer read, not terribly heavy, but a little grittier than a standard romcom type beach read.

[Rikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was OK at best. Its like a woman/child went on a vacation to Australia and it was so profound she had to write a crappy storyline so that the world knew that she had learned some Aussie slang.

[Terry Polston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my 2nd reading. Not at all what I remembered. I remembered it as being very Jewish-centric but the main character is 1/2 Jewish 1/2 Catholic. I remembered a running joke between her and her brother where they would randomly send a salami to each other. It's only mentioned once. It is an engaging story with unexpected twists and turns, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang where anything can and does happen (reference is from the book).
A good book, but it won't get a 3rd read.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great pacing and lots of fun things to learn about Australia.

[lanty · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5)

what an underdog of a book! i got this for a buck from a thrift shop because hey the cover looked cool but i was really blown away by how witty and fun this novel was to read.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh to be a cool, intellectual middle-class New York Jew with cool Australian band friends and a degree in film and physics....coolest girl I wish I was her

[Elisareads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny and energetic

[Robert Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps you DO want to see how the salami is made. Like that proverbial meat product, into which many ingredients - spicy, savory and sweet - are compressed, then sheathed into a tight, tasty morsel, this rock and roll novel is a satisfying - and at times guilty-pleasure - feast. Shapiro takes up the gauntlet of several pop fantasies at once: How far will a desperate, aging band go to get noticed? What if a forgotten punk rocker was a Zen oracle? Would my parents still love me if I brought a junkie home for dinner (and residency)? What if I sat on the trial of the decade? And finally, just what will it take to bring me out of the strobe-lit racket of hip cultural reference points and have a moment of clarity, in which I finally see myself and my place in the firmament?

Shapiro uses a two-pronged method to make - and answer - these inquiries: Wayfaring lapsed adults Rachel and Colin, the double protagonists of Salami. This is some trick. Rachel is a Catholic-Jewish New Yorker, wanna-be writer, all legs and mouth and she-id, Colin an Aussie musician trying to go from yobbo rocker to good man without compromising, whose dreams of INXS-style stardom land in his lap with a much bigger price tag than he could have imagined. In each narrative strand - and Shapiro's skill at fully inhabiting these two characters is beyond impressive - deals are brokered, excuses made, and much selfishness ensues, all while a very tangible Manhattan and Melbourne teem in the background. The rhythms of each locale, down to the slang, food, rural flora and urban fauna, oddly compliment one another, making for a Fodor's-worthy map for curious inner travelers.

The fact that Salami is set in the 90s and devoid of much Age-of-Internet trappings (cell phones, laptops, iPods, etc) is a surprising, welcome relief. Rachel's mental exhaustion at the onslaught of everything that would soon be amplified in the 00's is prescient, while Colin's aversion to corporate crassness is heroically quaint. The world Shapiro's characters sense and fitfully strive for, the one beneath the distracting, shiny, and sometimes deliciously irresistible temptations of pop, is more cluttered-over than ever, but like the titular Unexpected Salami, this tale shows that, regardless of the mishegoss, it can and will be revealed when you least expect it.

[Antof9 · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I realized that sometimes it's not good to read two books in a row by the same author. Especially if you read a second or third book by them, and then go back and read their first. In this case, I have to admit, it was a little disappointing. I just LOVED Matzo Ball Heiress, and this didn't come close. It certainly had some of her style, and some funny parts, but overall, just wasn't the same quality. I'm wondering if I had read this first if I would have thought it better. OR, would I not have bothered reading the other, as this was disappointing. hmmmmm interesting philosophical discussion ensues in my head :)

It was certainly interesting -- an American girl goes to live in Australia (like the sound of it so far). Hooks up with a band, something outrageous happens and she moves back to the states. Various odd things happen after that :) (can't give away the store!)

Since I always seem to find a section in a book about reading, I feel obligated to quote this part (expecially, since I know exactly what she means): "The house was a five minute walk from the St. Kilda library. Rachel was always reading, or at least checking books out. She flipped through masterpieces like my mum did with those romance novels she bought in the supermarket. But with her in the house, I did read more than I ever had with Simon in that room, for what that's worth. Rachel checked out Crime and Punishment during one of her "I'm slipping behind" fits. "A guilt literature moment," she owned up a day later." . . . "If she couldn't finish a book in one or two sittings, she wouldn't read it."

One other line I loved -- because I really thought it was just me who thought this, after Rachel has served on jury duty, she writes, "In sequestration, as on a long plane ride, each course of food is high entertainment."

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird, and funny. There is no other way to describe this book. I am not even sure I can sum up the plot; too many twists and turns. I would recommend it for fans of Christopher Moore, however. It is that strange but funny genre.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read most of this book while sitting in a hospital waiting area. I was giggling so enthusiastically at its absurdity that I had several people stop to ask what I was reading - that, to me, is the mark of a fantastic book!

[Kayleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've never forgotten the title, too bad the rest of it was so forgettable.

[Velvetink]

29/11/2013 1 0f 20 books for $10 the lot