Rating: 3.75* of five $1.99 ON KINDLE! The Publisher Says: Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany, where he wiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions-including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur of the book's title. Gerald's idyll is shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former Soviet republic. A series of hilarious misunderstandin...

I am laughing again as I turn to this, on page four: The day has dawned bright in every sense and I am making good progress up a ladder painting the kitchen – the most important room in the house – in contrasting shades of mushroom and eau de Nil. Anyone can do the white-walls-and-black-beams bit, but it takes aesthetic confidence and an original mind to make something of a Tuscan mountain farmhouse that isn’t merely Frances Mayes. It also takes a complete absence of salt-of-the-earth peasants a...

Cooking, crime & celebritizing collide - often hilariously -in this satiric tease on rustic retreats. Hamilton-Patersonwrites with an assured and idiosyncratic comic spirit.Two crackpot neighbors are thrown together in Tuscany -- a hotspot of distilled lunacy. Their mischievousnessbecomes a perfect uncorked stimulant.Meet a Brit ghostwriter for celebs who settles in Tusc to write and cook in peace. Then a hearty woman composer fr Eastern Europe plumps down nearby to ponder a score for a fawncy I...

I admit it, I was click-baited into this by the headline/title and had no idea where the book would take me.However, as I hold Fernet Branca in high esteem, the temptation was irresistible, and as the saying goes, “never lay down a temptation, it may not come again”. Once in my eternal youth I travelled through Uganda, with a bottle of Fernet Branca held closely to my heart. At time of travel a cholera outbreak was closing shops and markets at the leisurely speed of one mile/hour behind me, givi...

Are you hungry for cat pot pie, parrots 'n' carrots, horse custard, or deep-fried mice?image: The snobbish British writer and weird cook, Gerald Samper has moved into a villa in the Italian mountains. Here he finds he has a neighbor Marta, whose Russian based family are crime lords.image: This odd couple produce an amazing series misunderstandings and dangerous situations.One of Gerald's recipes... "Sometimes I lie in bed and cheer myself up by gloating over the culinary challenges faced and ove...

I didn't manage to read this in Mexico, though I was told it would be the perfect smart-person airplane book, but I did pick it up as soon as I got back, and it was very much as promised: dryly hilarious, fast-moving, clever, and a whole lot of fun. Cooking With Fernet Branca is dual-ly narrated by two next-door neighbors living on the Italian countryside: Gerard Samper, a very proper Englishman and self-proclaimed "master chef" (more on that soon), who makes his money ghostwriting autobiographi...

This is an odd one to judge: generally a pretty run-of-the-mill exercise, but with moments of real comic genius, in my view.I should say that I don’t normally read comic novels (or intentionally comic novels), and reading this one rather reminded me why. There can be something hectoring about someone trying constantly to amuse you. I also have a very low tolerance of fart jokes.I was driven to comedy in this instance partly for circumstantial reasons (as an antidote to miserable February weather...

A zany farce populated by oddball characters, most of whom become more endearing as things unravel. Very well-crafted and just packed with rich, carefully considered language. I thoroughly enjoyed the circus and laughed out loud in several spots.

I finished the book and then went to find out more about the author. I had never heard of him before choosing it from the back pages of a book that had brief synopses of books published by Europa Editions. Turns out this guy is sort of a loner which is fine by me. He has written works of poetry and some non-fiction. His first work of fiction, Gerontius, a reconstruction of a journey made by the composer Sir Edward Elgar along the River Amazon in 1923, won a Whitbread Award for First Novel in 198...

Funny and eloquent and completely pointless.

A witty & hilarious satire of all the "A Year in Provence," "Under the Tuscan Sun" books that romanticize the expat life in Europe. Once again, an overly-refined Brit goes to Italy to follow his writing muse. Please note -- he is a ghostwriter of biographies for celebrities, not a Nobel nominee. That fact does not limit his pretensions whatsoever. Settling into his quaint abode, he is horrified when his new neighbor moves in. Also an expat, she is fleeing her crimelord, overprotective family in

After you've read too many lovely, wish-you-were-here travel memoirs & foodie books, Cooking with Fernet Branca is the amusing & biting antidote. I thoroughly enjoyed this parody & it had me literally laughing out loud at times. I'd give it 3.5 stars overall; I'll round it up to 4 stars because it made me laugh out loud when reading at Starbucks.P.S. Don't read this book while eating... for two reasons.1) You may choke on your food from laughing.2) The included 'recipes' are revolting. LOL. Two

Hamilton-Paterson flawlessly folds Into this souffle many ingredients seemingly disparate, resulting in a desire for more. Told in alternating voices, the plot soars hilariously. Marta, a composer from Eastern Europe, and Gerald, a ghost-writing ex-pat from England, live in mutual disharmony, misdirection and misunderstanding on a Tuscan hilltop. It helps, but is not necessary, for the reader to be somewhat knowledgeable about Pier Paolo Pasolini, East European mafia, gourmet cooking. Add to thi...

Whatever else we can say about James Hamilton-Paterson, he is a very funny man. If you ever found yourself in the Italian countryside gazing at the villa next door and wondering who lives there and who, for gosh sakes, is coptering in and out, after reading this novel, you may very well decide you don’t really want to know. It may be entangling, and may, after all, be the end of all you hold dear.Gerald Samper, British biographer to the rich and famous, buys an old villa in need of repair in Tus...

Snobbish and pretentious guy with crazy recipes somewhere in Italian pastoral mythical rural land. Alone and crazy enjoying his silence. Until a woman from East comes and ruins his daily routine. The narrator changes focus from woman to a man, telling this story from both point of view, which is diametrical different.You'll meet funny creatures, even some mob and boy bend celebrity with traumatic surreal experience. You'll laugh at him and you'll laugh with him.So friggin hillarious. And then ag...

Witty and goofy, complex, farcical. Lots of somewhat contradictory adjectives come to mind. The recipes are truly horrendous and therefore truly hilarious. The plot is bizarre and entertaining. The two main characters take turns telling their stories in first person, and their differences and similarities are fascinating to watch develop. A fun and twisted book. I love the fact that this was nominated for a Booker prize--not what you'd think was a typical nominee!

This book is indeed witty. If not for the wonderful writing and use of language, I would have rated it lower, for in fact, I didn't enjoy it very much. I think the problem may have been the humor which perhaps was aimed at a British audience and the recipes, that others may have found hilarious, left me unmoved. In any case, I didn't get much of it and very little made me laugh. Ah, but the writing, the wit, that was worth the read.

one of the funniest books i've ever read. "Incidentally, this is the only recipe I know [for "Otter with Lobster Sauce"] that is associated with a curse."other recipes include "smoked cat" and "mussels in chocolate".

Hilarious. The narrator is a pompous twit through and through, that's what makes it great. Interspersed with recipes that get progressively more and more insane, and I think they all include a bit of mankind's most vile aperitif -- fernet branca.

Umm.. parts were laugh-out-loud hilarious, parts were ineffably tedious- overall a mad and random train wreck of a book. I peered through my fingers, unable to stop reading but couldn't wait for it to end.

one of 3 about gerald (gerreee!) and Marta? there are at least 2 of these titles anyway.

I imagine there is someone in this big wide world that finds this laboured, cynical, heavy-handed lump of a satirical novel amusing, but that someone is decidedly not me.

The title is true to the novel. There *is* a lot of cooking with Fernet Branca, as well as a lot of drinking of Fernet Branca. Essentially the novel is a send-up of the "Brit in Provence/Italy/Greece/Somewhere Sunny Where The People are Strange" books. The Brit (Gerald Samper) in this case is a ghost writer who thinks he has found his idyllic Italian mountain top villa to complete his latest ghost book. But the next door neighbor (Marta, there is always a next door neighbor, apparently, in the a...

My Goodreads friend Meliss recommended “Cooking with Fernet Branca” and I’m glad she did! Author James Hamilton-Paterson is hilarious.This book is the first in a series revolving around Gerald Samper, ghostwriter of sports celebrity autobiographies. He’s good at it, but only does that kind of writing because it pays well. He’s not happy with his work. Gerald’s hobby is cooking: experimenting and creating recipes. He shares some of these with the reader, recipes such as “Rabbit in Cep Custard.” Y...

Gerald, a writer of cheesy celebrity biographies, and Marta, a composer from a fictional former Soviet-bloc country, buy adjacent houses in Tuscany. Each one has also assured by a sleazy real estate agent that their property will afford them utter peace and quiet. Comedy ensues.Oddly, this book slowly descended from four stars to three as I continued reading it. I laughed hilariously during the first chapter, and then became less and less charmed by the book as it continued. I'm not quite sure w...

No summary is better than the one already patly written on this site. "Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany, where he wiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions-including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur of the book's title. Gerald's idyll is shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former soviet republic. A series of hilarious misun...

Early days yet. Nice piece of social satire, echoes of Tom Sharpe (Wilt etc) and others. The cooking angle is a major bonus, as is the dual point of view. Marvellous fanciful recipes.Brilliant section in Chapter 20 (round p 114) - a very funny passage where Gerry tells his guest about cruelty to vegetables. Reminded me of a wonderful Umberto Eco piece (ijFoucault's Pendulum) about improbable university faculties - Chair of irrigation at the University of the Sahara, etc. A great read, but patchy...

If you’ve ever had a love-hate relationship with your neighbor, if you ever thought that Frances Mayes’ vision of expatriate Italy was a little too precious, if you enjoy novels with unusual recipes, and you enjoy Odd Couple comedies then this is the book for you! Gerald Sampson, who buys a villa in Tuscany, is a snobby Brit who ghostwrites books for sports stars and fancies himself an experimental cook—and he does experiment—with cat, otter and like the title says, lots of the herbal spirit, fe...

Hilarious. Simply hilarious. A Englishman buys a house in the mountains of Italy seeking quiet for his writing. He sings arias while he invents the most bizarre recipes, the products of which he sometimes shares with his aggravating neighbor, a woman from Voynovia, who generously shares bottles of Fernet Branca with him. She claims to be a musician and composer in town to compose music for a film by a famous Italian director.Their experiences of living as neighbors differ depending on who does t...

I hesitated to give this book 5 stars only because I may just be so relieved to have enjoyed a book after a long succession of vanilla before it. But after looking backwards through my list of books I've read until finding the last book I enjoyed so much, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, I've decided that, yes, it earned those stars.The book is told from the points of view of two alternating narrators who are neighbors in Tuscany. Gerald is an uptight narcissist who loves his s...