Candyfreak

Rating:
Summary: Yummiest read you could imagine!
Review: Recently I watched a program on the Food Network that showed how Easter candy is made. There was nothing appetizing about the industrial pipes glurping out brown gunk, cesspool-like vats, and pinched-looking workers in clinical head coverings. And yet Steve Almond describes this same world and it shimmers with exquisite sensual detail. (Does the word "enrober" turn you on? It might after you read Almond's account of luscious sweets being cloaked in chocolate. Industrial? Not on your life.) I delighted in every aspect of this book, from the hilarious delineation of various candy addictions to the affectionate discussions of the confectionary creative process. Wonderfully stimulating to every human sense (including the sense of humor).

Rating:
Summary: witty & sweet.
Review: Review: From Small Spiral Notebook

In Candyfreak, Almond parlays his own obsession with chocolate into a quest to seek out the sources and practices of today's chocolate confection, as well as to learn about the forces that have overwhelmed the artistry and pluck of individual chocalatiers into the mechanized behemoth of American mass culture. Throughout, Almond tempers his political urgencies with his own disarming awe and glee at the industry and its products, and he also deals with unfolding family tragedies. His grandfather is dying, while at the same time Almond realizes his lifelong zeal for chocolate both saved his life and "broke his spirit." If it sounds like too much to cram in, perhaps you've not read Almond's ambitious book of sort stories, My Life in Heavy Metal, a book that will give you faith in Almond's ability to multi-task, regardless of genre.

Almond's prose packs a sensory wallop at all times. It is also candid, direct, and muscular- he wastes no space. Because of his economy, his writing is akin to the best candy: all good stuff, no fill or the useless air that puffs up the wretched Three Musketeers bar. When he rattles off the names of regional candybars now gone to mass marketers, he says their names are "incantatory poetry." When he says he doesn't like coconut, he says it's like "chewing on a sweetened cuticle." The writing says it: candy, chocolate in particular, for Almond is a passion, a "freak." And like all freaks, Almond has his rage, and the loss of a particular candybar, the Caravelle, and his subsequent despondency and rampage after any sign of it led him to consider the book.

Almond meditates on the sources of his "freak," including its lineage. His father's passion for Junior Mints he sees as a thing to awe: "I loved watching him eat these, patiently, with moist clicks of the tongue. I loved his mouth, the full, pillowy lips, the rakishly crooked teeth-the mouth of a closet sensualist." After some consideration of the roots, however, he's off, interviewing confectioners, visiting factories and tasting candy fresh out of the "enrober" (a device to which he devotes many fine lines), squirreling away samples, and trying to see what did happen to chocolate in America. The short answer is, well, the same thing that happened virtually to every worthwhile thing from beer to sports: mass distribution, mass advertising, mass culture, mass dumbing down.

The short answer doesn't do justice to Almond's work because Candyfreak does what the best creative nonfiction does: reports something in unerring detail, educates about a topic we thought we knew a thing or two about, tells a story both about the author and about the subject, and delivers the whole package in style. Almond's fevered style-known to many from his short stories-here finds a subject about which many folks feel feverish, and the result is one of the most entertaining books I've read in a while.

Almond's tries to balance political fantasy and the reality of the urge: "In my own pathologically romantic sense of things, I viewed [little] companies as throwbacks to a bygone era of candy, when each town had its individual brands. And the good peoples of this country would gather together, in public squares with lots of trees and perhaps a fellow picking a banjo, and they would partake of the particular candy bar produced in their town and feel a surge of sucrose-fueled civic identity. What I really wanted to do was visit these companies-if nay still existed-and to chronicle their struggles for survival in this wicked age of homogeneity, and, not incidentally, to load up on free candy."

While he showcases opinions and can seem hostile at times in his discernment, he is not faddish or uncritical: "The new chocolate specialty products are equally pretentious. I ask you, does the world truly need a bar infused with hot masala? The latest rage, as of this writing, is super-concentrated chocolate, with a cocoa content in the 90 percent range, a trend that will, in due time, allow us to eat Baker's Chocolate at ten bucks a square."

Opinionated, deftly and surprisingly written, thoroughly experienced, and surprisingly moving, Steve Almond's Candyfreak will have you wandering into specialty stores hoping they have candy racks. It will have you looking down your nose at M&Ms, for perhaps the first time in your life. It will have you cruising the Internet for the Five Star Bar, hoping the taste lives up to the writing. It will have you thinking about chocolate for weeks afterward, more than you ever have. And it will have you wanting to return to the book, again and again, to find those sentences, those toothsome, goo-on-your-chin, crunchulicious miracles of sentences, and to wish everyone you know the pleasure of experiencing the world, for a little while anyway, mouth first.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet and scrumptious, but still full of air..
Review: This book was entertaining, short and basically pretty addictive. Much like chocolate itself.

However, Almond's work was perhaps a little too short and a little too nothing for my tastes. It really lacked coherent intent, apart from the overriding attempt to seek smaller chocolate manufacturers within America. But there was little actually concluded or discovered.

I disagree with other reviewers, I actually quite enjoyed the semi-autobiographic self-indulgence of 'Candyfreak'. This is partly the basis for its appeal. I did tire of Almond's subtle commentary of the exploitative practices of the industry, but his continued support of such practices.

Essentially, there is not much more to say about the work because there is not much more to it. While I would recommend it as the lightest of entertaining reading, it basically doesn't really have a great deal of filling.

Rating:
Summary: It's not supposed to be a textbook on candy.
Review: Those one-star reviewers put off by Almond's personal asides and political views clearly didn't read the editorial reviews or the jacket flap copy before buying: "Part candy porn [mostly this refers to the sensual descriptions of candy, of course, but it's a pretty good indication that there might be some--gasp!--four letter words and racy humor], part candy polemic [in other words, the author has an opinion about things, and doesn't hide it], part social history [hence the political views, like 'em or not], part confession [personal details, voice, humor -- in other words, the very soul of the book]."

If you're looking for a straight-up, just-the-facts book about candy, clearly this isn't the book for you, nor does Almond intend it to be. If you're looking for vibrant, edgy, witty writing and sharp, sometimes controversial insights, then it is. In other words, if you don't feel like thinking or being challenged a little (ouch! ouch!) don't buy the book!

Rating:
Summary: Made me hungry!
Review: While this book about the candy industry was written in a nice, easy to read style, I found myself getting a bit bored sometimes. I love candy as much as the next person, but I don't get the same sort of pleasure the author does about describing how a candy bar is made. In fact, I get sort of confused quite honestly. That said, I did love the author and he made me laugh several times with tales of his obsession.

Rating:
Summary: I loved Candyfreak
Review: Yes, the book is just as much about its author as its subject. Yes, he does mention politics and refers to *gasp horror shock* marijuana use in at least one place, but to me that takes nothing away from its charm. The author is a funny guy, when talking about himself, others, candy, or even (very briefly) pot.

Reading about the small candy factories struggling to keep afloat and the people who run them was fascinating to me, even though I had never heard of most of candies before. I had no idea it was so hard to get candy on the shelves of grocery stores in this country.

A warning: This book has left me with a need to hunt down much of the candy in this book and try it, especially Valomilk. After I finished reading this book, I found a dusty more than half-forgotten childhood memory of eating Valomilks with my sister and discussing how silly the name is.

If they are as good as my six year old self keeps insisting they are to my thirty year old self, my new mission in life will be to eat as many of them as possible and become an unofficial, unpaid and unwanted spokesperson for Valomilk, shoving them on strangers and family members alike.