Bailey's/Orange Women's Fiction Group discussion

Our August book is La Cucina by Lily Prior.

The title translates as 'The Kitchen' and food as a sensual experience seems to feature prominently, so I hope none of us are dieting at the moment.
I haven't found much additional information about the book, but there is this from Publishers Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0...
this from the author:
http://lilyprior.com/la_cucina.htm
and several reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.
Enjoy!

I am copying these posts over from the nominations thread:

Jen said: Sorry guys I was late to get to this, but I picked it up today as I was home from work. I've almost finished, it's a very quick read. Has anyone else read this? I don't want to be rude but I'm having a really tough time reconciling this making the shortlist. I haven't finished and will come back to say more then.

Val said: I have read it. It is a very quick read, as you say Jen.
I quite enjoyed it, but thought it was not well written or thought out and it seemed to change genre part way through.
It got two stars in the end, an 'it was OK'. I have given higher ratings to books I enjoyed less, but that is when I can recognise that they are good even though I didn't like them.

Hi Val, thanks for moving our comments over.

I finished this a couple of days ago. I think the quickness of the read is what got me through - I found it to lack a solid narrative. It read as a series of vignettes clumsily woven together. The food/sex scenes were absurd, and while I found them funny, I'm not sure that was intended. It started out ok and I felt hopeful, but about midway I accepted it wasn't getting better for me. I found the stereotyped Sicilian characters and plot line made for particularly uncomfortable reading.

I really enjoy writing about food and the pleasures of cooking / eating generally, so I felt particularly disappointed. I gave it two stars because I can recognize the author's passion for her subject here, but this really did not work for me. It's more like 1.5 stars by my system.

So far, this is my biggest disappointment from the award shortlist. Thankfully I've enjoyed most others!

I enjoyed it more when I assumed it was intentionally funny, which was for about half the book.

It's a fair question, Val, I'd love to know if it was intentional. I sense not, but it would change my view somewhat if it was.

I described the story to my daughter and she thought it sounded funny and a bit weird. It might have been the way I told it.
We then had a conversation about food and sex, which I'm not going into here.