I dolci ingredienti del destino

by Julia Glass

Overview

Greenie Duquette vive a Manhattan e ha due grandi passioni nella vita: il figlio di quattro anni, George, e gli originalissimi dolci che realizza combinando fantasia e tradizione nella sua rinomata pasticceria del West Village. Il marito Alan, psicoterapeuta in crisi di mezza età, e il suo migliore amico gay, Walter, ristoratore dal cuore infranto, non le rendono certo la vita semplice, e Greenie trova pace solo tra gli aromi fragranti e speziati delle sue deliziose creazioni: budini di riso, cheese­cake, mini-éclair al cioccolato, mousse di arance… Finché un giorno il governatore del New Mexico si innamora follemente dell’impareggiabile torta al cocco di Greenie e le propone di seguirlo nella sua residenza di Santa Fe offrendole un posto da chef. Un’occasione di fuga che forse stava proprio aspettando, anche se non se l’era mai confessato… E, come sempre, quando si decide di dare una spinta al destino, davvero tutto può succedere. Con grande ironia e intelligenza, Julia Glass torna a coinvolgerci nelle vite imperfette dei suoi personaggi, che sono nello stesso tempo i nostri vicini di casa, i nostri amici, i nostri amanti.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788809775961
Publisher:	Giunti
Publication date:	10/10/2012
Sold by:	Giunti
Format:	eBook
Pages:	656
File size:	1 MB
Language:	Italian

About the Author

After graduating from Yale with a degree in art, Julia Glass received a fellowship to study figurative painting in Paris. Upon her return, she moved to New York, where she became involved in the city's vibrant art scene, worked as a copy editor, and wrote the occasional magazine column. She had always been a good writer, but her energies were initially focused on an art career. Finally, the pull to write became too strong. Glass put down her paint brush and picked up her pen

One of her earliest short stories, never published, was a semi-autobiographical piece called "Souvenirs." Loosely based on her experiences as a student traveling in Greece, the story was (by Glass's own admission) pretty formulaic. Yet, she found herself returning to it over the years, haunted by the faint memory of someone she had met on that trip: an older man whose wife had recently died.

Then, during the early 1990s, Glass experienced some serious setbacks in her life: Within the space of a few years, her marriage ended in divorce, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and her beloved younger sister -- a dynamic woman with a seemingly wonderful life -- committed suicide. Devastated by her sister's death, Glass turned to writing as a way of working through her grief and loss. Suddenly, the memory of the sad widower in Greece took on a melancholy resonance. She retrieved "Souvenirs" from her desk drawer for one final rewrite, expanded it to novella length, and spun it from a different point of view. Renamed "Collies," the story won the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal in 1999. It also became the first section of Glass's remarkable 2002 debut novel, the National Book Award winner Three Junes.

After a spate of "postmodern" bestsellers, Three Junes was like a breath of fresh air, harkening back to an era of more straightforward, gimmick-free writing. Spanning a period of ten years (1989-1999), the novel covers three disparate, event-filled months in the lives of a well-to-do Scottish family named McLeod, weaving a cast of colorful, interconnected characters into a tapestry of contemporary social mores that would do Glass's 19th-century role model George Eliot proud.

The same dazzling sprawl that distinguished her acclaimed debut has characterized Glass's subsequent efforts -- rich, dense narratives that unfold from multiple points of view and illuminate the full, complicated spectrum of relationships (among parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, friends and lovers). In an interview with NPR, she explained her penchant for ensemble casts and panoramic multidimensional stories: "I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write about...the world I live in."

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

March 23, 1956

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Education:

B.A., Yale College, 1978; Scholar of the House in Art, Summa Cum Laude, 1978