True Confections

By Katharine Weber

Book Overview

Take chocolate candy, add a family business at war with itself, and stir with an outsider’s perspective. This is the recipe for True Confections , the irresistible new novel by Katharine Weber, a writer whose work has won accolades from Iris Murdoch, Madeleine L’Engle, Wally Lamb, and Kate Atkinson, to name a few. Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky’s marriage into the Ziplinsky family has not been unanimously celebrated. Her greatest ambition is to belong, to feel truly entitled to the heritage she has tried so hard to earn. Which is why Zip’s Candies is much more to her than just a candy factory, where she has worked for most of her life. In True Confections , Alice has her reasons for telling the multigenerational saga of the family-owned-and-operated candy company, now in crisis. Nobody is more devoted than Alice to delving into the truth of Zip’s history, starting with the rags-to-riches story of how Hungarian immigrant Eli Czaplinsky developed his famous candy lines, and how each of his candies, from Little Sammies to Mumbo Jumbos, was inspired by an element in a stolen library copy of Little Black Sambo, from which he taught himself English. Within Alice’s vivid and persuasive account (is her unreliability a tactic or a condition?) are the stories of a runaway slave from the cacao plantations of C te d’Ivoire and the Third Reich’s failed plan to establish a colony on Madagascar for European Jews. Richly informed, deeply moving, and spiked with Weber’s trademark wit, True Confections is, at its heart, a timeless and universal story of love, betrayal, and chocolate. From the Hardcover edition.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307395863
• ISBN13: 9780307395863
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books
• Length: 274 Pages
• Weight: 0.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

An imaginative treat

For all the talk about realism in fiction, it is something special to step into a beautifully and intricately imagined fictional world. This is a very inventive novel about a family candy business narrated by a woman who knows all its secrets. I became immersed in Alice's world and learned a lot about candy making, spent time with an array of offbeat characters, and picked up some history about World War II and Madagascar along the way.

Fun and Bittersweet

A funny, edgy book. The narrator, Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, is so perfectly off-kilter -- she's both sympathetic and disconcerting, often at the same time -- that she lends a slightly funhouse feeling to the story's telling. This dynastic epic of a candy-making family encompasses immigration, assimilation, success, failure, racism, inclusion, and everything you ever wanted to know about the candy business, all skillfully interwoven. And Alice's weird, funny, almost-perfectly-reasonable voice is the perfect medium. You pay attention, because Alice is the kind of narrator you want to keep an eye on, and in the process the story unwinds vividly. This is a smart novel, out of the ordinary and fun -- recommended whether you have a sweet tooth or not (although that's definitely an asset).

Delicious

The title of Katharine Weber's TRUE CONFECTIONS describes exactly what she has concocted--something sweet, salty, tart, and full of nuts. I laughed out loud many times, but I was also fascinated and moved by the narrator, Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, an outsider always looking in. Does she believe the story she tells? Does she know when she's fabricating and when she's not? I didn't care. Somewhere beneath her defensiveness and distortions I glimpsed a big, hurt heart that made sense of it all.

Nutty and satisfying

You don't have to be a candy lover to fall for this tale spun by Alice Ziplinsky as she recounts her version of the family history behind Zip's Candies. I loved Alice's distinctive perspective, at once authoritative (particularly when talking about the candy business)and deliciously self-serving. It's a fabulous family saga played out against an unusual background--a smart, engrossing read.

Confection of substance, finest kind

There's something for everyone in this novel which can be read on a variety of levels and therefore is likely to appeal to the reading multitudes. Weber's love affair with the geological striations of story telling shine here making the story as sly and clever as it is fascinatingly informative about the candy business. Mine own hindmost was laughed off the floor as often as I relished the inspired turns of phrase and succulent use of language. Could this be Weber's breakout book? I bet it is, it's a gem indeed.