When I began to read this collection of eight short stories I easily recognized the streak of rage and despair. For generations, women within traditonal cultures were powerless, except, at times, in the sphere of the home. The written voice of the modern Italian woman is raw, painful, sometimes bitter.

But more importantly, now, it is often defiant and proud of its renegade independence and that's what draws me to Darlene Madott's voice.

There is a susceptibility for women to succumb to certain powerful elements in our culture - whether it be the idol of family, sexual love, wifely duty or children. It is a siren call that is difficult to resist if you were raised to believe that those duties come before everything, before your own needs and desires and well being. One character notes "For this was love, this wretched devotion ..." It sometimes controls and destroys the women that embrace it.

But here, in virtually every story, the female characters waver but finally resist the temptation to be swallowed up by lover or family or duty.

I found myself falling into these stories as one does into an engrossing novel. Each story took me into another family, another world. The relationships, situations, and stories are complex and subtle. And many, many family secrets are exposed. I found myself rereading to catch the many nuances. Each reading, I was fully engaged. I find it difficult to choose a favorite story.. "Making Olives," "the Day I Kissed Pierre Trudeau", and "The Namesake were particularly rich.
I recommend this collection of stories highly. You'll be impressed.

When Darlene Madott casts her line, you can't help but bite and allow her powerful writing to reel you in - sometimes slowly, at first, but with a cresendo that keeps you hooked. She can strip the veneer of a simple life and plunge the reader into the depths of experience. She can connect the mind-boggling death of stars to the lives of fragile human beings, and make the reader nod in understanding. Reading Madott is an experience in itself. This is a short story collection written by a master of the genre

I read one of Darlene's stories, "Bottled Roses" many years ago. For years it stayed with me. And now this collection of eight stories, one as powerful as the other--a real gift. I will always go back and reread this writer's stories. Making Olives and Other Family Secrets is a book not to be put on the shelf and forgotten.
I look forward to more collections by this writer.

Darlene Marlott writes in an intensely personal way and she has described herself as an “anthropologist” attempting “to render the sounds of ancestral voices” with “truth and dignity.” In the title story, Madott uses the framework of making olives to give us a classic first-person tale of family disgraces, jealousies, feuds, property thefts, father-son battles, sister-sister hatred, and the deadly stones that settle in the stomachs of those who should be close to and caring of one another. There is harshness here and some bitter pills to swallow. But through the pain and the sadness, there is always an intense love of life, something that pervades all of Madott’s work.