Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 28, 1994                   TAG: 9408210112
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: D-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by LISA SOLOD
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`OLIVIA' - NOVEL OF ITALIAN FOOD AND JEWISH MOTHERS

Somehow over the past several years I have managed to read almost everything that Judith Rossner has written, although if I were asked who my favorite authors are she would never come to mind.

Rossner writes intelligent beach books and "Olivia," her newest, is no exception. Like her other novels it is often a compelling and interesting read but it is also, like some of her other work, too long and often sloppily written. The upshot is that I could not put it down but I was annoyed with myself.

The novel as a whole falls into that category I call The New York Fantasy Novel: people live in Manhattan on less money than seems humanly possible while pursing fascinating careers that seem to give them plenty of time to find love with the proper stranger who lives very close by, perhaps a short walk away, or in the case of "Olivia," right upstairs. Nothing horrible happens, people are ethnically mixed, and the dialogue is witty and sharp and too clever by half (the novel is full of jokes, most of them old, printed verbatim). The fact that "Oolivia" starts out in Italy is what makes it more interesting than most, the fact that Rossner tries hard to deal with the question of Jewish identity in America today (New York specific, of course) makes "Olivia" a novel with more conscience than many, and the fact that Rossner's main character has a love affair with honest, fatty, rich and beautiful Italian cooking makes the novel almost as much fun as eating in a fantastic restaurant several nights in a row.

Caroline Ferrante is a late-30ish divorcee with a teen-aged daughter, living in a Manhattan loft and hosting a cooking show on cable television. Her lover is a slightly older Jewish pediatrician with three children whose wife left him for another woman (see what I mean?).

Caroline has decided that she needs to write a memoir, originally entitled "My Life in Food." It turns out to be an autobiography heavy on guilt and pain, revolving around her tormented relationship with her daughter, Olivia, who may be the single most horrible teen-ager in the universe.

Caroline must confront her own child-rearing, her value system, her guilt and responsibility to see how she has molded the shape of her daughter's life. At the same time she must deal with the very real issues of her own goals and desires. The reader of this fast-paced novel turns pages compulsively, hoping praying for catharsis, epiphany, a resolution that is somehow comforting. Instead, wh at one gets is almost too much realism considering the fantasy elements of the book.

So while "Oolivia" makes for fascinating reading, there is something almost cruel about the novel's premise: that we are essentially helpless to truly affect our children's lives and that it is only through sheer luck that any of them make it out of this world alive.

Lisa Solod is a Lexington writer.