Title: I Love You Like a Tomato
Author: Marie Giordano
Publication Date: July 2003
Page Count: 382
Genre: Fiction
From goodreads.com
ChiChi Maggiordino will do anything to get God's attention. She will hold her breath, stand on tiptoe for an hour, walk a mile backward, climb all stairs on her knees.... anything. When her grandmother teaches her how to use the Evil Eye, telling her it's how Jesus Christ made his miracles and how the Italians got rid of Mussolini, ChiChi realizes it's what her prayers have been missing. Now she can get started on the business of making her mother happier by helping her find love, and healing her brother's weak lungs. But ChiChi's family lives in Minneapolis, and it's the 1950s. For an Italian immigrant family, sometimes it seems like nothing can make life easier. ChiChi's mother still pines for her husband, a long-dead American soldier; ChiChi's brother is disdainful of her sacrifices and penance--he doesn't understand what his older sister already knows, that sometimes God needs to be bribed. When her grandmother passes away, ChiChi steps up her search for meaning and happiness, but it seems to be fruitless. And she struggles, the way so many women do, because her love for her family is suffocating, even while it fulfills her. It's not until she meets two Italian dwarves, and they teach her of the ancient clown tradition, the commedia dell'arte, that she comes to understand that in order to make everyone else happy, she herself must be happy. But first she must find her own way in the world.... and learn to accept that not even the power of the Evil Eye can keep people from changing.
I should start by saying that this book took me entirely too long to finish. I was working on another project that took my attention away from reading, which is really too bad, but there are only so many hours in the day...
This book was disjointed anyway, and it probably wasn't the best one for me to start and stop. I was confused by the characters and their actions in certain situations... The narrator (ChiChi) was incredibly unreliable, and it required me to read between the lines quite a bit. Because the story started out with her so young, I was left with her point of view and her understanding of the happenings around her. Her mom was not always great woman, but in the eye's of a very young daughter, we weren't presented with that outright. We had to connect the dots to realize that her mom may not have been as upstanding as ChiChi thought. This is a difficult way to read a book and it is the hardest part of books written in first person.
While I didn't dislike this book, I wasn't blown away enough for a recommendation. It is also hard to know because it took me so long to read the book that that was why I wasn't moved by the book, or because the book itself just didn't show itself. ChiChi's character is likable enough, she is silly and funny and entertaining. On the other hand, she is sad and desperate and confused. Overall, I would say that this book, had I read it more quickly, I would have probably enjoyed it more, but I doubt it would have ever been a 10 out of 10.
Overall Rating:
6/10
Next Review: The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult
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