Ristorante Paradiso
Telling the story of Nicoletta, a young girl seeking out the mother who left her as a child,Ristorante Paradisoexemplifies the best and worst elements of the slice-of-life genre. The protagonist's mother, Olga, is spirited off to Rome to marry her dream man, Lorenzo, whom she believes would have refused her had she revealed the existence of her child. Fifteen years later, the adult Nicoletta plans to expose her mother by telling Lorenzo the truth. However, it would be a mistake to think that Ono is actually interested in such weighty issues as child abandonment and familial loyalty. Instead, readers are in for a shallow soap opera focused on curiously identical-looking waiters and the women who pine for them. Nicoletta herself at the end of the story sums up the unbelievably cheap development and resolution of the family drama with one perfect descriptor: anticlimactic. On the plus side, for those who can get over the lack of depth and realism, the story offers cute subplots for anyone who has imagined what sort of drama may await in the back rooms of Italian restaurants.(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.