Rating: 
Summary: Uneven and uninspired
Review: Ah, Calabria. Is there a more appealing locale on the face of this earth? The author clearly recognizes the unique charm of this region. He just can't seem to convey it very well to his readers. The vignettes are interesting but he just can't sustain your interest long enough to care.
Rating: 
Summary: Journey Into Tedium
Review: American Immigrant Sagas are of two kinds. One is the "only in America" story. As a tale of great risk, many struggles and final triumph, it often succeeds. Far riskier is this, the dread second type: immigrant's child visits Old Country, returns gushing over colorful relatives, quaint folkways, impenetrable dialects, bewitching cuisine. This absolutely requires vigorous writing, narrative skill, insight and a venturesome spirit.Pity Mark Rotella has none to offer. The month-long visit that makes up much of this book is spent mostly not with kin but with Giuseppe, a local entrepreneur. Giuseppe has a car, you see--but tRotella's free transportation comes in the form of Giuseppe's business trip. Thus Rotella explores Calabria, his ancestral region, with a postcard-salesman dunning deadbeat clients. Spontaneity dies here, and much of the month seems to pass in real time. On the rare occasions that Rotella is about to develop a chance meeting into something more, Giuseppe says "Sorry--gotta go!" Rotella does no better on his own. He makes much of visiting Roccaforte, pretending it's important to hear its residents speak Greek. But he botches it, arriving at siesta time. The village is asleep, so he immediately leaves, mission unaccomplished. Likewise Santo Stefano, birthplace of a legendary regional Robin Hood whose name "every Calabrian mentions with pride." In the town, the bandit's name draws a blank. Rotella learns nothing and from such visits because his idea of research is proceed from ignorance and then ask random people random questions (e.g., What's with the mafia around here? or How come Calabria's still so poor and backward?). He never follows up, thus turning issues into small talk. Occasionally he tries to pump up some melodrama with auguries or omens or hints of "something" mysterious or threatening about to happen (at one point he fears kidnapping), but nothing ever does.
These incidents are tame and lame, and so is the writing: flat, plodding, repetitive. He visits a pottery and finds it full of pottery; meets a potter and learns the pottery has "machines that had to be pedaled with the feet" (oh--you mean potter's wheels?). The potters, he says, have formed a pottery guild and paint their pottery in a style paralleling the pottery of Deruta, a town famous for pottery. Elsewhere, old men stroll on their morning stroll, and his spicy sausage tastes spicy ("spicy" is about the limit of Rotella's culinary lexicon). There's a dental quality to such prose--it's numbing--but his forays into imaginative writing are worse: the brief historical sketch embodying Calabria as a woman is uncompromisingly vulgar. Other references to sex are equally crude. His reporting is shaky. A relative is Masimo in one sentence and Masino in another; a restaurant unaccountably changes names; Alaric is both Goth and Visigoth. Such gaffes are often eliminated if writers self-edit, which prompts this question: If Rotella couldn't be bothered to read his own book (and his editor, if any, likewise), why should you? Of course, Publishers' Weekly praised this book extravagantly and fulsomely. Possibly because Rotella works for Publishers' Weekly?
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Bill Marsano is an award-winning writer on travel and wines and spirits,
Rating: 
Summary: Explore Family Roots in Calabria: Taste and Feel Old Italy
Review: Hear the sounds, taste the food, kiss the relatives, explore the terrain, climb the mountains, visit the castles, learn the history (Greeks, Bruttians, Romans, Visigoth conquests) ... experience the adventure of exploring one's family roots in a small village in southern Italy. The village, Gimigilano, is located in Calabria, the region that looks like the foot on a map of Italy, which everyone knows resembles a boot. The author, Mark Rotella, describes his *very* visit to this village with his father and later subsequent visits either alone or with hsi wife, who is of Engish and Dutch heritage. He captivates the reader with descriptions of nostalgia and heart-felt longing when he emotionally connects to the traditions, customs and life of the village. He is befriended by Giuseppe, a photographer, who produces postcards that he sells to regional shops and businesses. Giuseppe becomes his personal driver and tour guide to Calabria ... The author intersperses memories of growing up, recalling how his grandfather made wine, which he traded with a Portuguese farmer, who raised pigs ... his grandfather slaughtered the pig in the old-fashion way and provided the family with the same cuts of meat that the author saw on his visit to the village. The author includes memories and discussions with his father. One of which is the family story when his grandfather retuned to the village to find himself a suitable wife. He married her in the village and took his bride to live in America. Both his grandmother and grandfather practiced old world ways, the author was able to trace many of the family traditons back to the village and culture of the region. Favorite dishes, foods, spices and their preparation, Italian hospitality, importance of family and the sense of belonging, are all aspects of the Italian culture of which the author is proud. The continuation of customs and traditions in Calabria persist ... kneading and baking bread in communal fashion, making wine, eating rabbit stew, tending an olive grove, stealing figs from a neighbors tree. The author wished to be viewed and accepted as the "returning son of the village" ... even sought Italian citizenship. He was disappointed to discover he was seen as "the American visitor". He found out ...one had to be *born* in Calabria, to be viewed as Calabrese. While Calabria has a depressed economy compared to Rome, Venice and Naples, northern cities ... it has a proud and resilient people who continue to live in the region helping the area to slowly develop. This author captures the feelings and lifestyle of the village and surrounding towns and cities so that the reader is captivated and wants to experience it first hand. The imagination of the reader is captivated by the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of Calabria ... one feels and senses this part of Italy is unspoiled in its splendor and beauty. You want to go there before the modern world intrudes and destorys it. Erika Borsos (erikab93)
Rating:
Summary: Evocative and moving
Review: I found Rotella's account of his travels through Calabria to be evocative and very moving. For those seeking a travelogue - look elsewhere. This is one person's journey to discover his roots and family, and along the way discovering a beautiful unspoiled part of Italy, far from the tourists in the North. The descriptions of his relatives, the countryside, and the food made me truly envious. This is a lovely book.
Rating:
Summary: Clumsy effort
Review: I made the mistake of judging the book by its cover (and title). The premise sounded great but the author just couldn't pull it off. Poorly written and even more badly structured, he never seems to decide whether his book is a travelogue or a search for roots. Don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: Ready to Discover Calabria
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It is a lovely, lyrical ode to a region that is unknown and unvisited by most Americans, but that certainly seems worthy of discovery. The author evokes so perfectly the feel of the place---the rugged landscape, the pace of life, the warmth of the Calabrese people, and of course, the incredible food---that I felt like I was a part of his journey. Very heartfelt and highly recommended!!!
Rating:
Summary: Rotten "Stolen Figs"
Review: I would just like to add my note of agreement with the reviews of Michael A. Gatto and Bill Marsano and add one additional rather major error in "Stolen Figs"; on page 92, "After Hannibal came the Longobards, the Byzantines, and, in the middle of the sixth century, the Normans,...". How's that for turning history on its head? And he's only about five centuries off with the Normans. Conclusion? A complete waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: perfect union of writer and subject
Review: In a perfect union of writer and subject, Publisher's Weekly editor, Mark Rotella, returns to his grandparents' homeland of Calabria. "Spurred" by Gay Talese's book, "Unto the Sons", to explore his southern Italian heritage, the author, an unabashedly, and self-admitted "romantic", provides an excellent introduction to this often overlooked region, conveying his own passion for familiarizing himself with it in the process. Largely untouched by tourism, and writers, for that matter, Calabria is both financially depressed and culturally rich, with large emigrant populations in Niagara Falls, New York, Toronto, Canada, and Danbury, Connecticut (though Rotella grew up primarily in Saint Petersburg, Florida). Whether traveling solo, with his father, wife, or postcard salesman, Guiseppe, Rotella captures the unique personality of each village he visits, with a superb eye for atmosphere, setting, and aesthetically outstanding visuals. Political and historical background, including foreign influences on the region, and effects of the Mafia, provide a framework and understanding to current situations. Rotella intersperses snippets of other writers' experiences, local legends, folktales, proverbs, customs, and traditions, lending an uncommonly expansive insight to Calabria. Combining past and present also lends a certain fascination for the reader, and includes the author's reunions with relatives, relationships formed over his several trips there, his dad's poignant remininsces, a visit to the church his grandparents were married in, and the elaborate Easter celebrations he attended. Though not without a sense of humor, Rotella's writing is most impressive for its unaffected style. Descriptions of the rugged, yet beautiful landscape, and harsh geography have a cinematic quality, and his writing becomes completely poetic over the mouthwatering cuisine he abundantly partakes of. In the end, and seeming to mirror the author himself, what emerges is an enticing picture of a gracious, highly social, and charmingly "masculine" society. Woman reader from New York
Rating: 
Summary: The secrets of Calabria
Review: Mark Rotella, grandson of Calabresi immigrants, travels with his father to the toe of Italy, to their ancestral home. Giuseppe, their guide, introduces Rotella to the secrets of the region, including how to steal the proverbial fig of the title without ending up in court.
Rating:
Summary: Big on Heart, Poor on History
Review: Rotella's touching account of an Italian-American returning to his roots in Calabria mirrors the experiences of many Italian-Americans, but falls far short when it comes to providing the historical underpinnings of the region. Not to seem petty, but when you purport to publish any book whose goal is "to acquaint the reader a given geographical locale," Step One is getting its history right. In one telling passage, Rotella describes a town's Carthaginian roots - a town that he notes, was founded in the 8th Century AD. This blatant anachronism (Carthage ceased to exist 1000 years before this town's foundation) is one of many historical innacuracies in the book. But Rotella's pseudo-science does not stop there. He attributes Southern Dialect (notably, the ending of "o" words with "u" - as an Saracen-influenced phenomena. Really? Every single mainstream linguist simply thinks Southern Italian evolved from Latin slower. Rotella's speculation is parituclarly disappointing since in other parts of the book he notes the slow evolution of the South that buttresses the mainstream linguists' view. Rotella also uses the collective word "Mafia" to describe ALL Italian Organized Crime - this despite the fact in Italy, "Mafia" is an exclusively Sicilian term, with "'Ndrangheta" being used in Calabria, and "Camorra" in Campania. This sloppiness seems strange - again - since at other points in the book, Rotella clearly demonstrates he knows the correct terms. At various points in the book Rotella seems to attempt to compile a list of famous Italians from the region. He mentions Tony Bennett and Gay Talese, Pythagoras and Phil Rizzuto. But again, more thoroughness would be welcome. Rotella leaves off several of the famous (Pontius Pilate, Lucan, and most of the philosophers of the Risorgimento) and ALL of the notorious (Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia). Lastly, how could a book purport to paint a picture on Calabria without mentioning the fact that its Ancient Name "Italia" and its first tribal inhabitants, the "Itali" provided the name for the entire peninsula and ethnic group? When all is said and done, Rotella falls victim to the same "search for exotic influences" that befalls NON-Italian writers. We would expect something a little deeper from an Italian-American with roots in the region. And, after all his research, doesn't Rotella realize Italy is no different than any other country in the world - it's myriad conquerors are more accurately chronicled and hence well known in our collective consciousness simply because Italy has a flourishing written history going back 2500 years? The book contains many heartwarming stories and brings attention to a region of Italy, Calabria, that Rotella accurately intimates is the true Tuscany (unspoiled villages, rustic mountains, agrarian lifestyle) but utterly fails when trying to make the reader understand the region, because of all the historical, scientific and sociological innacuracies. Proofreading, accuracy, background and thoroughness are not too much to ask from a book purporting to acquaint the reader with Calabria. On the contrary, they are absolute musts.
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