Review: True Confections by Katharine Weber

This bitter-chocolate novel by Katharine Weber uses an unreliable narrator to take us through the history of a New Haven candy-making company as well as racial politics, urban decline, mothers and children and arson. The narrator, who moves from the "arson girl" to the head of a family of candy-makers, is always entertaining, even as she achieves some ironic distance from her own narrative. Anyway, there's a lot of foreshadowing, and the conclusion takes us beyond mere entertainment into the realm of literature. This is a very funny, fairly moving novel. Challenges: Winter 2010 challenge.