I Love You Like a Tomato

By Marie Giordano

Book Overview

ChiChi Maggiordino will do anything to get God's attention. She will hold her breath, stand on tiptoe for an hour, walk a mile backward, climb all stairs on her knees... anything. When her grandmother teaches her how to use the Evil Eye, telling her it's how Jesus Christ made his miracles and how the Italians got rid of Mussolini, ChiChi realizes it's what her prayers have been missing. Now she can get started on the business of making her mother happier by helping her find love, and healing her brother's weak lungs. But ChiChi's family lives in Minneapolis, and it's the 1950s. For an Italian immigrant family, sometimes it seems like nothing can make life easier. ChiChi's mother still pines for her husband, a long-dead American soldier; ChiChi's brother is disdainful of her sacrifices and penance-he doesn't understand what his older sister already knows, that sometimes God needs to be bribed. When her grandmother passes away, ChiChi steps up her search for meaning and happiness, but it seems to be fruitless. And she struggles, the way so many women do, because her love for her family is suffocating, even while it fulfills her. It's not until she meets two Italian dwarves, and they teach her of the ancient clown tradition, the commedia dell'arte, that she comes to understand that in order to make everyone else happy, she herself must be happy. But first she must find her own way in the world... and learn to accept that not even the power of the Evil Eye can keep people from changing.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765345889
• ISBN13: 9780765345882
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

Dancing as fast as she can

Why doesn't Mamma love me? Maybe if I try hard enough I can make her care. I Love You Like a Tomato is an often bitter, sometimes sweet novel aabout a little girl born of a teenaged mother in war-torn Italy. Others say ChiChi is pazza, crazy, but it's her mother who's the crazy member of this family. There isn't much wrong with ChiChi that her self-absorbed, self-pitying mother couldn't fix if she bothered. This dysfunctional family moves to post-war Minnesota, and Marie Giordano tells the story of ChiChi's desperate quest for love. Engaging and funny despite the sadness of it's theme, Love/Tomato is a little known gem of a book that also illuminates the experience of the Italian immigrant to 1950's America.

The tomatoes are ripe right now!

I enjoyed this book's title, first of all -- it was why I picked it up in the first place. It held my attention throughout, entertained me, taught me, surprised me, and gave me a good laugh. There were some typos in the book, but other than that, was just a good and easy read.

A Great Book

I am flat-out awed by this wonderful book. I love it! I've shared it with others who share my opinion. My boyfriend wouldn't give my copy back to me, my mother read it and ordered copies for her friends. I gave a copy to my boss for his birthday and he (and his wife) loved it. I fell in love with ChiChi and her brother, Marco, and all the characters in the book. Marie Giordano writes with incredible passion and life. I was drawn into every moment. I especially was interested in the dwarves, and ChiChi's relationship to them. Poignant, moving, funny. This book tops my all-time favorite books and I can't wait for the next book in the trilogy. I've never felt so intimately involved with a family on the page before. The voice of ChiChi is hypnotic, mesmerizing.

A very good read!

This book was an excellent read and is supposed to be the first in a trilogy about the Maggiordano family. The ending left me wanting more and wondering what happens to the main characters - I can't wait for the next two books to come out. ChiChi experiences a lot of what it's like to grow up as part of an Italian minority in a predominently waspy community and, while I don't think her experiences are typical, a lot of them were dead on regarding culture clashes that are still happening in certain places where Italians are a very small minority.Brava, Signora Maggiordano!