Tomato Rhapsody

A gleaming, joyous gem!

Fabulous! Wonderful! Amid the slew of dreary American fiction, obsessed with dysfunctional families, addiction and vampires (YUCK!), I cannot tell you how delighted I was by this utterly original and refreshing novel. I have long loved works of historical fiction, but, truth be told, I often find them a bit dry, but not this one. Tomato Rhapsody had the literary chops and substance that I hope for in good literature, but oh my, an exuberant humor leaped from the page. Yes, it took me a few chapters to adjust to the structure and style - a bit like an elaborate summertime meal with friends that demands your attention and patience - but once my ear caught the rhythm (literally, as much of the dialog takes place in a wonderful rhyme, reminiscent but easier than Shakespeare), the story literally pitched me into a magic world of food and sex and love and villainy, tomatoes, olives, Tuscany, donkeys (who would have thought!) and wonder like few books I have ever read. My highest praise for Mr. Schell. I cannot wait to read what next springs forth from his mind.

An entertaining read!

I thoroughly enjoyed Tomato Rhapsody. It's creatively written with amusing characters and an engaging story line. I could vividly picture the settings and loved the play on real historical figures.

Better Than I Was Expecting

I received this novel through LT's Member Giveaway.
Tomato Rhapsody is a book about a Jewish farmer who worships the tomato. He is engaged to a girl he can't stand and then falls for a Catholic girl who is the step daughter of a most hateful olive farmer. It is a strange book in that the village people talk in rhyme and it does have some crude language that I could have done without, but overall it's a very good book, especially from a first time author. It introduces characters at a very fast pace, but not so fast that you can't keep up. It is full of humor and one of those books that I ended up liking more than I thought I would.

E cosi bello!

Wow. Just - wow. I really wasn't sure when I started ... but I loved it.

I'll certainly never look at tomato sauce the same way again.

It was an extraordinary book. It's a fable about how the tomato came to Europe, and how it overcame the strange, popular prejudice that it was extremely and immediately poisonous, to become inseparable from Italian cuisine. It's also about a wicked stepfather, the oppression of Jews in early Renaissance Europe, the curing of olives, Christopher Columbus, Catholic missionaries in Africa, sanitation, copulation, and celebration. It's a romance (<i>not</i> a love story), basically Romeo and Juliet if the lovers had been older and there had been someone sensible in Fair Verona. Everything in the story has meaning and significance: a donkey's bray, a shaft of sunlight, a drop of holy water. The story is earthy - sometimes downright crude - as well as golden, rapturous, euphoric - and yes, rhapsodic. It is both sprawling and intimate, with a good-sized cast of characters who do not come across as "characters"; these are <i>people</i>, wildly individual and altogether real.

Some might find the rhyming dialogue cloying, or indeed find it no better than annoying. But I find that the couplets to my inner ear became as natural and simple as, dare I say, Shakespeare. (I was tempted to write an entire review in rhyme, but it would take forever; I just don't have the time.)

Read this book. But first make sure your pantry is well stocked with good olive oil, good bread, eggplant (try the Good Padre's idea in Chapter 3 - it's wonderful), fresh herbs - and tomatoes. Definitely tomatoes. Lots of them.

An amusing Elizabethan Era tale of greed and love

In sixteenth century Tuscany, ebreho farmer Davido loves his tomato plants that his grandfather brought back from his voyage with Columbus; The Jew relishes the bright color to the incredible aroma that makes him feel pure of heart though his future in-laws fear he loves the plant more than his betrothed. New town priest The Good Padre permits Davido to bring his "love apples" to town, the Jew is ecstatic.

Meanwhile vile olive mogul and village owner Giuseppe and his henchman Benito search for truffles. His stepdaughter olive farmer Mari is attracted to the unacceptable outsider as Jews are less than the beasts of burden and besides Giuseppe has plans for her and her land. At the Feast of the Drunken Saint donkey race all hell breaks loose as everyone wants a piece of something or someone leading to "a comedy of errors" that prove "much ado about nothing".

With homage (or perhaps chutzpah) to the Bard especially A Merchant of Venice, TOMATO RHAPSODY is an amusing Elizabethan Era tale of greed and love. The story line is kept at a frantic pace throughout as one thing leads to another. Although none of the characters (except the tomatoes) ever develop beyond a simple stereotype, fans who enjoy a zany historical caper will want to read Davido the ebreho's adventures in Tuscany.

Harriet Klausner

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