Monday's Reviews Today: An Italian American Clan & Sexual Fetishes

-- Publishers Weekly, 10/31/2008 7:40:00 AM

In Adriana Trigiani's "frilly valentine" to the West Village, Very Valentine, the author paints a picture of a "boisterous" Italian-American family. Trigiani, a bestseller, "channels ambition and girl-power, but is surprisingly reserved—and retro—when it comes to romance." In Daniel Bergner's exploration of our sexual quirks, The Other Side of Desire, the author explores how we come to like what we like in the bedroom. The book has elements of "titillation, shock value and documentary" as Bregner questions "is a man who desires feet any less odd than the psychiatrist who treats him or the scientist who studies pedophilia or the journalist who describes a whipping session in precise detail or the reader who becomes voyeur?"

Very Valentine
Adriana Trigiani. Harper, $25.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-06-125705-6
This first-in-a-trilogy is a frilly valentine to Manhattan’s picturesque West Village, starring a boisterous and charmingly contentious Italian-American family. Valentine Roncalli, adrift after a failed relationship and an aborted teaching career, becomes an apprentice to her 80-year-old grandmother, Teodora Angelini, at the tiny family shoe business. While Valentine struggles to come up with a financial plan—and shoe design—to bring the Old World operation into the 21st century, her brother, Alfred, is pushing Gram to retire and sell her building for $6 million. It’s not all business for Valentine, of course: handsome and sophisticated Roman Falconi, owner and chef at a posh restaurant, is vying for her heart. Bestselling Trigiani channels ambition and girl-power, but is surprisingly reserved—and retro—when it comes to romance: “[O]ur relationship has to build slowly and beautifully in order to hold all the joy and misery that lies ahead,” thinks Valentine. Still, this genteel and lush tale of soles and souls has loads of charm and will leave readers eager for the sequel. (Feb.)

*The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys into the Far Realms of Lust and Longing
Daniel Bergner. Ecco, $24.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-06-088556-4
As if it weren’t already difficult enough to find a suitable mate, what if a prerequisite was that the lover be missing an arm or a leg? Or willing to be roasted on a spit? Comparatively, a mild-mannered foot fetish seems, well, pedestrian. Bergner (God of the Rodeo) investigates how “we become who we are sexually, whether our lusts are common or improbable.” The book’s combination of titillation, shock value and documentary evokes a set of page-turning conundrums: is a man who desires feet any less odd than the psychiatrist who treats him or the scientist who studies pedophilia or the journalist who describes a whipping session in precise detail or the reader who becomes voyeur? It’s all fairly delicate and disturbing material, and while the descriptions can grow florid, the author’s strongest moments (e.g., evoking the tabooed desires impelling the artist Hans Bellmer’s work) compensate for the lapse. Bergner has an empathetic sensibility and convincingly suggests that what a fetishist needs is a willing and loving partner with complementary interests. (Feb.)

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