The Supreme Macaroni Company

Review of The Supreme Macaroni Company by Adriana Trigiani


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: For over a hundred years, the Angelini Shoe Company in Greenwich Village has relied on the leather produced by Vechiarelli & Son in Tuscany. This historic business partnership provides the twist of fate for Valentine Roncalli, the school-teacher turned shoemaker, to fall in love with Gianluca Vechiarelli, a tanner with a complex past . . . and a secret.

A piece of surprising news is revealed on a fateful Christmas Eve when Valentine and Gianluca join her extended family. Now faced with life altering choices, Valentine remembers the wise words that inspired her in the early days of her beloved Angelini Shoe Company: "A person who can build a pair of shoes can do just about anything." The proud, passionate Valentine is going to fight for everything she wants and savor all she deserves—the bitter and the sweetness of life itself.

My Review:

It has been a while since I read the last book in this series. The Supreme Macaroni Company is the third installment of the series. It might be surprising to learn this but the first book in this series was not really one of my favorite. So why did I keep reading? Adriana Trigiani is one of my favorite authors and although I mostly prefer her Historical Fiction novels, I guess I felt like I had to give her more of a chance and I really wanted to stick with her for as long as I could.

The second book of the Valentine series was better. This one however was the best. I think it is also the last one.

The ending sort of surprised me. And one event in the middle really surprised me but I will not ruin it for future readers by giving it away.

So to summarize, I liked it and I liked it more than the other two and would even say that I liked it a lot though not as much as The Shoemaker’s Wife.

This story starts right where the previous novel stops if memory serves correctly though I wouldn’t fully count on my memory since it is been years since I read the last one and my memory is not so great these days.

Gianluca has just asked Valentine to marry him. I had forgotten that part, I just remembered that they had gotten together. So the story starts with Christmas and telling Valentine’s parents and then of course there is a wedding.

But then there are the issues. They do not just go off into the sunset and live happily ever after.

The characters are mostly all the same as I recall. The foremost being Valentine from whose point of view the story is told. Then of course there is the rest of her crazy family. And I thought mine was weird. Well, they are weird but I guess it just comforts me to see that in some ways, her family is weirder.

The only downside was that I didn’t think some of the Italian translations were correct but since I am not a full-fledged expert I will leave that to others to comment about it.

Positives about this include its realistic story line. The ups and downs didn’t follow the normal patterns where everything always works out in the end. And as I said earlier, the characters are unique as well which makes me feel as though this story could have really happened. And I liked how the Italian language was sprinkled throughout the story.

Check it out for yourself and see if you don’t like it as well, though you might want to start at the beginning of the series. Let me know what you think.

Contains: mild profanity