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From
The Washington Post
Fiction
Italian Overtures
'Nectar: A Novel of Temptation' by Lily
Prior
Reviewed by Nancy McKeon
Sunday, July 21, 2002; Page BW03
NECTAR
A Novel of Temptation
By Lily Prior
Ecco. 248 pp. $23.95
Her naked, pear-shaped buttocks shimmered with perspiration as
she rocked back and forth in the blistering heat, pushing, pushing the
thick eggy dough with the nut-brown matterello, her
grandmother's worn-shiny rolling pin. Behind her, by the corner
fireplace that would one day warm the Americans who would renovate the
Tuscan farmhouse, Paolo watched, mesmerized by the rhythmic
physicality common to making food and making amore.
Oh, excuse me, you've read this book already?
Now, that opening graph isn't from this (or any other) book. It's
just my way of suggesting that perhaps it's time to go beyond food
porn, beyond real-estate porn.
But where, exactly, to go?
London writer Lily Prior, who passed through the food-porn genre
with La Cucina in 2000, vaulted right over the heavy-breathing
rustic-house-in-a-foreign-land-as-sex novel, landing instead in
sex-as-sex territory. Nectar, which sets itself up to be a
celebration of the senses told in "once upon a time"
fashion, tracks the erotic excursions of Ramona Drottoveo, chambermaid
at a southern Italian country estate, whose natural scent causes men
to throw themselves at her none-too-dainty feet.
Ramona is a fleshy albino of monumental stupidity who lives not so
much to be adored as to be serviced. By day she ill-temperedly plumps
the Signora's pillows, and by night she lumbers about the grounds,
moving from priest to pig keeper to the 24 beds in the footmen's
dormitory, looking for, and finding, places to drop her drawers. Her
carryings-on are tolerated because one of her nocturnal stops is the
library of the Signor, who on her wedding night rides her on all fours
"with a thwap on her pink buttocks."
Think of her as Moll Flanders or Tom Jones, or perhaps the anti-Candide,
sailing uncaring past the embarrassing trouser bulges, the brawls and
the suicides she causes. Being called a whore, a witch, makes Ramona
laugh. Her revenge is always her nonchalant dominion over the men of
the estate. The lower orders there rut like pigs in her presence,
while some of the more worthy join wth her despite their better
judgment, then, like the guilt-ridden family physician, kill
themselves knowing their pleasure will never be exceeded: The doctor
"helped Ramona to her feet, adjusted his pants, and kissed her
lightly on the forehead before picking up his bag and going on his
way. He did not look back. As Ramona shook out her skirts and retraced
her steps to La Casa she had all but forgotten the doctor who was to
take his life for her."
The white-haired, pink-eyed chambermaid marries the estate's
scholarly beekeeper after a three-day courtship simply because he
won't succumb like the others, then cuckolds him on their wedding
night. The betrayal causes her bridegroom to stagger from their
cottage to one of his hives, which he opens in order to allow the
angry bees to exploit the allergy he has kept secret from all.
Ramona's response? Exultation at deliverance from her 24 hours of
marital boredom. There's a slight pause for the disappearance of the
beekeeper's corpse, then Ramona's second marriage, two weeks later, to
her lover, then banishment from an estate made quarrelsome and uneasy
by the missing body, blighted fruit trees and 17 stillborn piglets.
If La Casa seems colorful and superstition-ridden, the poor
precincts of Naples, where Ramona and her husband go, are even more
medieval, abounding in fortunetellers, pickpockets and humpbacks,
"highly prized at that time for their magical powers." The
tableau is so filled with grotesques that only when Ramona begins to
screech "Mi chiamano Mimi" -- she suddenly sees her future
as a glamorous opera singer -- do we suddenly realize . . . "La
Boheme" . . . Puccini . . . we're in the last years of the 19th
century! These seem to be scenes out of Brueghel, even Hieronymus
Bosch, but they're taking place in the early years of Picasso.
As it is in real life, Naples emerges as one of the liveliest
characters in the book. The full brutality of its poverty can be felt,
though Ramona permits others around her to absorb its effects before
it finally touches her. But even as she reaches bottom, there are
surprising twists and turns ahead in this picaresque work.
It's fair to call Nectar a romp, but probably not a fable. A
fable, after all, is supposed to have a point, teach a lesson. This
story is more like a bawdy Chaucer tale. Ramona's life force far
exceeds her capacity to appreciate the lessons that life tries to
teach her. The reader of this lively but baffling tale may be equally
hard-pressed to discover what those lessons might be.
Nancy McKeon supervises several weekly sections of The
Washington Post.
© 2002
The Washington Post Company
From People magazine
August 5, 2002
SECTION: PICKS & PANS; Pg. 43
Nectar by Lily Prior Reviewed by Erica Sanders
In this hilarious second novel, the natural scent of a woman is more
than delightful: It's deadly. Men are driven to adultery, financial
ruin, even suicide under the influence of Ramona Drottoveo's
beautifully bewitching body odor. In the southern Italian countryside,
the lusty albino chambermaid dreams of living in Naples. As men trail
her everywhere just to get a whiff, she discovers the richness of her
aromatic endowment.
This comic fairy tale is full of colorful but not particularly
endearing characters (such as a hunchback who moonlights as a human
cannonball at the circus) and absurd situations (one unfortunate
butler grows a third ear on the back of his head; dogs and horses
swoon in Ramona's path). Like her first novel, La Cucina, Prior's
follow-up bursts with mouthwatering descriptions of sumptuous meals.
And there's an equally vivid portrayal of the squalor Ramona finds
herself living in when her fantasies fail--as they must in this witty,
well-spun yarn. (Ecco, $ 23.95) Bottom Line: Smells like a winner
Copyright 2002 Time
Inc.
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