Reviewed by Jeanne
As a twenty year old college student in Italy, Tembi
Locke was infatuated with the country, the art, and with the handsome Italian
men. There was one, however, who made
her a bit uneasy—not because she thought he was dangerous, but because she was
afraid he wouldn’t be a casual affair.
She was right. Saro turned out to
be the love of her life, but their time together was short.
I’m not giving anything away by saying that, because
the book opens as Saro is dying. Locke writes movingly of how she stayed by his
side, trying to bring whatever comfort she could. Their story isn’t told in a
linear fashion, but I didn’t have any trouble keeping up. For me, the heart of the story was the question
of how – or if—their relationship would be accepted by Saro’s traditional
Sicilian family.
Thanks to a novel I had just read, I was aware that
Sicilians are a law unto themselves.
Their land is beautiful but harsh; as a result they are deeply
clannish. Saro had a previous
relationship with a girl from Sardinia, and his family had taken a very dim
view of her. Tembi is a black woman from
Texas—what chance is there that they will accept her?
On the way to romance, we learn a lot about Tembi’s
family as well: activists and over-achievers who broke barriers and cleared the
way for Tembi to follow her dreams of becoming an actress. Saro is supportive,
willing to uproot himself and move because as a chef he could work anywhere;
but Locke would need to be in America to achieve her dream. (Interestingly,
while she does earn a certain amount of success as an actress, that plays a
very small part in the story.)
From the very first pages, food, taste, and flavor are
woven into their story. As Saro is
dying, Tembi has ice pops at hand, ready to give him a cooling taste at any
moment. The descriptions of food are
glorious and complex; from fresh almonds to fennel, from making cheese to
growing fava beans.
This is a story of love and grief and food and home,
all mixed together. I wouldn’t call it a
tear-jerker, though Locke describes the depth of her pain; it’s more about
coping, creating a family, and finding your place in the world. I hesitate to say I enjoyed the book since it deals with grief, but in
all honesty, I did.
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