Olivia (Rossner novel) Olivia (Rossner novel) Olivia (or, The Weight of the Past) is the penultimate novel by Judith Rossner, author of the critically acclaimed best sellers "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" and "August". Published in 1994 by Crown, "Olivia" examines "a mother-daughter conflict set in the world of gastronomy." Caroline Sindler is a chef and popular cooking teacher. In flashback, she recounts her past life: after showing an early interest, she learns to cook. After dropping out of college, she travels to Italy, where she finds work in a restaurant, and meets Angelo, a Sicilian in his thirties. After becoming pregnant by him,
Looking for Alaska on the Honors and Advanced Placement classes' required reading lists for Knox County high schools on the grounds that its sex scene and its use of profanity rendered it pornography. Ultimately, students were kept from reading the novel as a whole, but "Looking For Alaska" was still available in libraries within the district. In May 2012, Sumner County in Tennessee also banned the teaching of "Looking For Alaska". The school's spokesman argued that two pages of the novel included enough explicit content to ban the novel. Further controversy came from the cover art. In August 2012, Green acknowledged that the