Cara Lee’s Reviews > Cooking with Fernet Branca > Status Update

When my friend, a true foodie, selected "Cooking with Fernet Branca," for our book club, I feared it might be all about cooking - which I avoid when possible - and hoped it might be a story that uses food descriptions to enhance sensory experience - along the lines of "Like Water for Chocolate." It was neither. Instead James Hamilton-Paterson has written a genius send-up of foodie culture, travel literature, and books about remodeling houses in Tuscany.

The main characters are Gerald and Marta. Gerry is a foppish British ghostwriter living in Tuscany, who mocks his celebrity clients, takes on simple do-it-yourself projects that turn life-threatening, and believes he's a fabulous opera singer and chef. His recipes repeatedly call for the bitter Italian liquor, Fernet Branca - to pour down his throat as well as into each dish.

Marta is a frumpy emigre from the fictional former Soviet-bloc country of Voynovia. She has come to Italy to escape a controlling father who was once a party insider and is now a criminal kingpin, and to compose music for a famous filmmaker whom she insists is not a pornographer. She's a slovenly housekeeper who prefers Voynovian fare consisting mostly of lumpy meat, fat, and grease. She, too, consumes immoderate quantities of Fernet Branca, for which she blames Gerry.

These nosy neighbors are desperate to ferret out each other's secrets, all the while convincing themselves that they just want to be left alone. Marta's involvement in a film about environmental activists prone to orgies, and Gerry's work with self-absorbed celebrities provide perfect grist for the satire mill. Take, for example, Gerry's exchange with the aging, vegetarian leader of a boy band:

"My guru says bacon & speed are the two greatest evils in the world."
"Speed? Worse than, oh, crack cocaine?"
"No, no, speed. You know - the hectic pace of modern life. Too much speed, too much rush, too much communication. That's what she says."
"I see. And bacon, too."

The surest laughs, and groans, come from the horrid recipes, such as smoked cat or mussels in chocolate, which made me grateful that my friend didn’t cook any of them on book club night. But the deeper hilarity is in comparing Gerry’s and Marta's very different takes on each other's shenanigans. Each of them is certain of his or her own talent, sobriety, and sanity in the face of their neighbor's tastelessness, debauchery, and lunacy. I typically find serio-comedy more engaging than out-and-out satire, but this story repeatedly made me laugh out loud, and that WAS delicious.