Olivia - Softcover

Gourmet cooking, the television industry, private-school troubles, and one of NYC's last eligible bachelors amply furnish the life of Caroline Sindler in this warm, if disappointingly anticlimactic entertainment by Rossner (His Little Women, 1991, etc.). The youngest child of a New York Jewish academic family, Caroline takes after the family's Italian housekeeper, a passionate cook, rather than, say, Gertrude Stein. Bored by college, Caroline spends a summer as an au pair in Italy, where she gets pregnant by- -and consequently married to--Angelo Ferrante, a Sicilian ladies' man. At least she can cook in the restaurant where he tends bar. Predictably, once the couple move to Rome to operate a restaurant of their own, Angelo returns to his stable of mistresses while Caroline slaves in the kitchen and tries to care for their daughter, Olivia. The restaurant succeeds, but the marriage doesn't; Caroline says good-bye to 12-year-old Olivia (who refuses to leave her father) and retreats, traumatized, to her parents' Westport, Conn., home. Two years later, just as Caroline has recovered enough to start holding cooking classes in her Manhattan loft, Olivia reappears, claiming that her father has recently married a monster and begging to live with her mother instead. Caroline has good reasons for optimism: Her precious daughter is coming home, prospects are brewing for a cable TV cooking show, and the Jewish doctor upstairs is showing romantic interest. But she hasn't reckoned on spoiled teenaged Olivia's furious accusations and desire for revenge, which demands that several lives be shattered before mother and daughter can forget and forgive. The climax builds, fueled by Olivia's anger and Caroline's guilt--but in the end, this competent chef solves all her troubles so neatly and easily that one wonders what the fuss was about. Until then, though, engrossing characters and entertaining riffs on the importance of traditional meals keep the pages turning. (Literary Guild main selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Good news for Rossner ( Looking for Mr. Goodbar ) fans: after a lapse in His Little Women , she is back in top form in this bouillabaisse of a novel, the story of a woman who turns a passion for food into a career but in the process almost loses her daughter and her self-esteem. Narrator Caroline wryly describes her Manhattan youth in a family of academics to whom her interest in food is declasse; her disastrous marriage in Italy to flagrantly unfaithful Angelo Ferrante; the birth of their daughter Olivia; her term as chef of the Ferrantes' ristorante and her decision to divorce Angelo, who insists on retaining custody of Livvy. When events later bring Livvy to New York, where Cara supports herself by giving cooking classes, Livvy is a self-righteous teenager who hates her mother and calls her a "kitchen monster." Manipulative, truculent Livvy is the quintessential rotten kid, so bad you want Cara to belt her one. Complicating Cara's life are her relationship with the doctor who lives in the upstairs apartment and a TV packager's yen to transform her cable TV show into a prime-time network star turn. When Livvy repeats her mother's mistakes, the narrative acquires complexity and momentum. Rossner takes some risks here in debating Jewish/Catholic attitudes toward abortion, but as both Cara and Livvy probe their uncertain ways to identity as mothers and as independent women, the novel ends on a satisfying, if realistically ambiguous, note. Anyone who likes to eat, cook or read about food will savor Rossner's descriptions of tasty dishes and culinary lore, conveyed with gusto and sensuous detail. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.