Rosa, midwaythrough life, is alone. Her husband passed away long ago, and her cosmopolitandaughter is already out the door, keen to marry and move to the city. At looseends, Rosa decides to transplant herself to the flat, foggy Lombardy provincesfrom her native Naples and there finds a way to renew herself--by opening arestaurant, and in the process coming to a new appreciation of the myriadrelationships possible between women, from friendship to caregiving tocollaboration to emotional and physical love.

Unconventional in style and yet rivetinglyaccessible, The Hunger of Women is a novel infused with the pleasures ofthe body and the little shocks of daily life. Made up of Rosa's observations,reflections, and recipes, it tracks her mental journey back to reconnect withher own embattled mother's age-old wisdom, forward to her daughter'sinconceivable future, and laterally to the world of Rosa's new community oflovers and customers. A tribute not only to the tradition of women's writing onhearth and home but to the legacy of such boundary-breaking feminist writers asGertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Hélène Cixous, The Hunger of Women isnothing less than a literary feast.