Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World - Softcover

Sarah Vowell is a contributing editor for This American Life on Public Radio International and a columnist for Salon. These stories were written in Chicago and San Francisco.

Broadcaster and columnist Vowell (Radio On: A Listener's Diary, 1998) presents a wonderfully eclectic mix of smart-witted, often hilarious personal essays. For every reference Vowell makes to The Great Gatsby, Huck Finn, or the Book of Revelations (three of her favorites), she quotes a combination of Sinatra, Elvis, Springsteen, and Johnny Cash a dozen times, resulting in refreshing writing with attitude. Throughout, Vowell's passion for music, sound, and rhythm are manifested in her words and her topics, whether firing a cannon with dad or making a mix tape for a friend's girlfriend. Many of the stylish essays are ``on assignment'' accounts, in which Vowell allows herself to be dressed up for a night of goth clubbing, attends Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp, checks into the grimy and ghostly Chelsea Hotel, and tries to learn to drive at 28. Her title track, ``Take the Cannoli,'' is not about music, but takes its namesake from a sound byte in The Godfathera film Vowell obsessed over when in college. The film's ``made-up, sexist East Coast thugs'' taught Vowell a valuable lesson about family, guns, and dessert. But not everything is sugar-coated in Vowell's world: she claims that ``even as a six-year-old I knew I'd never be good enough to get into heaven,'' and she recounts whining her way through Disney World in ``Species-on-Species Abuse.'' She gets cranky and sardonic, but at these moments her talent may shine brightest. In ``Dark Circles,'' Vowell, coffee in hand, comes to grips with her insomnia: lying awake in bed, she recalls her day, arriving at the less-than-soporific conclusion that ``everyday, no matter how cheerful, how innocuous, always contains within it some little speed bump of anger or hate, some wrong place, wrong time, hell-is-other-people moment of despair. Nighty night.'' Vowell's crafty writing, often free-spirited and sometimes neurotic, is like literary stand-up comedy with a lot of heart and perfect delivery.-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.