by NickyPellegrino (Author)
Italy, 1964. Maria Domenica is the eldest daughter of Pepina and Erminio Carrozza, a farming family from the tiny southern village of San Giulio. At sixteen, Maria's life is limited to the confines of her mother's rural kitchen - where she bakes bread every morning, the way the Carrozza women always have - and the Caffe Angeli, a place of friendship, strong espresso and famous ricotta sfolgliatelle. Her parents have high hopes for their beautiful first-born, but she has other plans. Maria runs away to Rome but, one year later, she returns to San Giulio in disgrace - eight months pregnant with the identity of the father a mystery. Hastily, shamefully, she is married off to a neighbour's son. But she soon escapes again, this time to England, where she searches once more for a new life for herself and her daughter, Chiara. Many years later, it is Chiara, not Maria, who finds herself drawn back to San Giulio - to the dusty little piazza, to the enticing aromas of the Caffe Angeli and to her long-lost family. But she soon discovers that the simple Italian life she seeks is not as simple as it seems - particularly where the past is concerned.D ELICIOUS is an irresistible saga - written with all the freshness and warmth of a Carrozza family recipe - about the enduring love affair between Italy and England, about three very different generations of Italian women, and an old kitchen in Campania that binds them all together.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Publisher: Orion
Published: 20 Jan 2005
ISBN 10: 0752861298
ISBN 13: 9780752861296
Book Overview: The exotic quality of Joanne Harris meets the warm, traditional storytelling of Maureen Lee Nostalgic, romantic quality of Italy contrasts with the starkness of Liverpool Nicky Pellegrino is the editor of a women's magazine in New Zealand Foreign rights have so far sold to Germany, Holland, Portugal and Spain 'Full-bodied as a rich Italian red, it is a page-turner combining the missed chances of CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN with the foodie pleasures of CHOCOLAT. A warming read for a winter's night' EVE.