This little book has all the verbosity of a Dickens novel, and none of the charm. I found the subject matter horribly dry and the writing hopelessly dense in many places. It is as if Weber thought to herself, "If I use overly long, complex sentences, obscure references, huge amounts of near-irrelevant historical research, and as many long words as I can find, I will sound intelligent". This really was a slog, and I would not recommend it to anyone except those with unnatural amounts of interest in the history of candy-manufacturing. How Weber managed to make candy uninspiring is beyond me. Katharine Weber has written a fiercely fascinating novel that reads like a true story. It's all in the first person, told by Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky in the form of "a multi-generational saga of the family-owned-and-operated candy company, now in crisis." According to Alice, she is the most reliable person to tell this tale as "Nobody is more devoted than Alice to delving into the truth of Zip's history."Zip's Candy has been around since the early twentieth century, founded by one Eli Ziplinsky and his brother. The three primary candies are Little Sammies, Tigermelts, and Mumbo Jumbos, all names taken from the children's book, The Story of Little Black Sambo.The story starts out with Alice telling the reader about her entrance into the Ziplinsky family. She has applied for a job and is hired by Sam Ziplinsky, the current patriarch of the family, on the spot. This is a real coup for Alice as she has a history of being found guilty of a grade three felony for arson. Alice goes through all the hoops she can to let the reader know that the whole trial was a farce and the arson itself an accident. She had an incompetent lawyer and she would never have been found guilty under other circumstances. The media has named Alice 'Arson Girl" and she carries this shame with her. Working at Zip's changes Alice's life. "Perhaps some people would call this destiny. Zip's candies needed me, and I needed Zip's Candies. An inexplicable joy welled up in me as I realized that I knew that my life could start again from here, from this moment."Alice loves the Ziplinsky family and shortly after starting work there, gets involved with Howard, Sam's son. They marry three months later and have two children. Alice's own family is WASPish and emotionally barren. Her parents barely acknowledge her existence. The Ziplinskys are Jewish and Alice tries to learn all that she can about the Jewish faith. However, the true Jewish faith and the way that the Ziplinskys practice it are like night and day.Frieda, Howard's mother, does not warm up to Alice and a life-long barrage of emotional turmoil evolves between the two of them. Alice spends a great deal of the book giving examples of Frieda's coldness, miscommunication, and unfair treatment towards her. "I once heard her telling one of her Hadassah cronies that the problem with me was that I was a dumb goy with two smart Jewish children."Alice realizes, as she tells the history of Zip's Candy, along with the details of candy manufacturing, that she will always be known as Arson Girl and there will be a black cloud hanging over her. However, she continues to believe that her emotional, fiscal and material investment in Zip's Candies is all honest and comes from a desire to tell the world the true story of this company.As the story opens up, it goes back and forth in time, from one incident to another, and changes locale frequently. Howard is in Madagascar and there is some problem in their marriage which becomes clear later on. One of the beauties of this novel is the way it changes back and forth from one story to another and always comes back to what began the discussion initially. There are no loose strings and everything is covered even if it seems like a Mobius strip at times.I never thought that a history of a candy company and a treatise on how to make candy would hold my interest but this novel did from beginning to end. It has the advantage of being written by Katharine Weber, author of Triangle: A Novel which I loved. It is also peopled by all kinds of wierdos, one stranger than the next, some laugh out loud funny and others sad sacks. I read this book in two days which is very fast for me and I had trouble putting it down.
Do You like book True Confections (2009)?
wanted to like this but it was hard. And all the talk about candy, made me hungry.
—natalieeileen
The narrator is a little crazy, but she's likeable. It makes the book a fun read.
—Racefan007
