The way to a man's heart.... (The Wedding Officer - Anthony Capella)

Member Name: fizzywizzy

Product:	The Wedding Officer - Anthony Capella
Date:	29/02/08 (108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wonderful food descriptions, interesting setting, feel good story

Disadvantages: Capella doesn't quite pull of something this heavy

Young officer James Gould arrives in Naples in 1943, charged with the task of putting to an end the constant stream of applications from Allied soldiers to marry Italian women. With prostitution and hunger rife in the city, James must decide which relationships are genuine and deny permission to wed to those he suspects are not.

Used to paltry rations, James and his fellow officers are delighted when a new cook, Livia, arrives at their quarters and delicious meals arrive at their table, introducing them to foods and flavours they have never experienced before. But unknown to James and the men, the cook has been sent to work there by the local mafia who are determined to overcome Gould's attempts to clamp down on the black market. Meanwhile, James finds his work as the Wedding Officer gradually becomes less important as he learns what are the important things in life.


"The Wedding Officer" is Anthony Capella's second novel; the first, "The Food of Love", was a huge hit and was chosen as a Richard and Judy Summer Read. Once again, the key elements are food, Italy and love but this time Capella has produced a much heavier read, much less light and frothy than his debut. Unfortunately it appears that in doing so , Capella has strayed from his strengths. The initial idea is great and offers plenty of opportunity for a reprise of the humour seen in "The Food of Love". However, as the story follows the events of the war it becomes, understandably, much darker and I felt that Capella started to focus too much on the war, cramming into the final chapters too much information that was superfluous to the story. The story might have flowed better had the book commenced with as much gravity as it ended.

The highlight of the book is Livia's food and how it defines the relationship between her and James: one of the most striking features is that whether describing sumptuous feasts laid out on heaving tables or the make do meals that Livia creates from next to nothing when her family are penniless. Capella excels at this kind of writing and, for me, easily outshines the likes of Joanne Harris or Lily Prior.

"He learnt, too, that 'asparagge e funghe metten'o scuorno 'o cattivo cuoco', asparagus and mushrooms teach a cook humility; that you should favour 'a preferenza se da 'o latt'e capra, 'a ricott' e pecora e 'o furmagg' e mucca', milk from the goat, ricotta from the sheep and cheese from the cow; and that 'cci voli sorti, cci voli furturna sinu a lu stissu frijiri l'ova', it takes both luck and good fortune just to fry eggs."

"When he asked her why she put a cork in the pot whenever she boiled seafood, she muttered something darkly which he could not quite catch. On closer questioning, it turned out that the cork would ward off 'malocchio', the evil eye."

The characters of James and Livia well drawn and believable, James the law-abiding Englishman perfectly illustrating the stiff upper lip attitude of the British officer and the passionate, hot-blooded and opinionated fiery Italian woman. On the whole the supporting characters are quite comical and this could easily have spoiled the novel if it wasn't for the fact that the strengths far outweigh the weaknesses. It didn't seem quite fitting to have these stereotypical characters - who border on the verge of of being caricatures in fact - alongside the earnest James and the ardent Livia. One interesting positive was that Capella was dignified in the even way he portrayed the Germans as well as the Allied soldiers, doing this with considerable humanity and fairness.

Another striking feature is the obvious research that Capella has done for this novel and the attention to detail; if only all authors had his talent for creating evocative imagery.

"He had been warned about the smell. As they'd retreated from Naples the Germans had blown up the sewers - those that hadn't already been destroyed by weeks of British and American bombing. Burning braziers stood outside some of the buildings to counteract the stink, but they seemed to have little effect. In the gloom of the narrow streets, with half-destroyed ruins towering precariously on either side, the inky flames only added to apocalyptic atmosphere."

In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Capella talks about how he took inspiration for some of the characters and situations from the wartime journals and letters of soldiers who were fighting in Italy during the war.

In spite of the serious backdrop to the story, there is plenty of humour in "The Wedding Officer". The scenes where James is educated about the art of seduction through thinly disguised cooking lessons are wonderfully funny as are the attempts of the aged Malloni to make palatable tins of army issue "meat and vegetables".

Overall this is a pleasant and very readable love story that has enough features to make it quite special and certainly rather compelling though it does slow down towards the end and could easily shed fifty pages without losing any substance. In spite of claims otherwise on the book cover from the Daily Mail, this is no "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" however: the two might be set at the same time but "The Wedding officer" cannot match Louis de Bernieres for drama and thrills. It does, though, have echoes of "Chocolat" but in a more real setting.

"The Wedding Officer" is the perfect holiday read, even more so if you happen to be holidaying in Italy and is worth a read for the food alone.

448 Pages

Summary: A delicious mix of food and love in 1940s Italy