Cooking with Fernet Branca

Appraised by gourmets, but not widely known. I regard myself a gourmet as a gourmet when it comes to talk about this novel.The recurring joke is that Gerald Samper cooks meals following awful recipes, which always contain a lot of Fernet Branca as key ingredient. These indigestible meals are directed to his new neighbor at his Tuscan ranch: an ugly, fat woman form an undefined, former Soviet Union republic. She is a composer and writes the soundtrack for the next movie of a famous (an eccentric) Italian movie maker. The director seems to resemble Fellini. Her relatives are all involved with the Russian mafia. Of course, nothing wrong with it – they are from Eastern Europe.
An interesting aspect is that the story is told from the two perspectives: Gerald and Marta. The first sentences of each chapter refer always to the facts told by the counterpart. How different and the same time similar in their misinterpretations they are! Both of them hate Fernet Branca, but both think the other is addicted to it. In the end the book is plain funny and full of absurd inventions. I will read many more of these Samper books.