CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING

An awkward, spiky Italian American teen navigates family chaos, Catholic school, and misogyny in 1960s Boston, with brio.

Christina Falcone thinks she doesn’t have much going for her. Her hair is wild, her breasts slow to grow, no one believes in her academic ambitions—but worst of all, she’s lonely, especially as high school begins and her former best friends turn to cheerleading, which she considers “fun for the feeble-minded”; she’ll crank up her Joan Baez and Simon & Garfunkel albums instead. If that sounds like a YA novel, be assured it’s not, with author Leone’s close third-person narration providing a knowing, ironic tone. Chapters feel as different, and occasionally as uneven, as rough gems in medieval crowns. Christina has a thing for the saints of that era; she devours their stories and obsesses over the ones who supposedly endured multiple torments. When she discovers the never-canonized St. Christina the Astonishing, who preferred birds to people, she knows she’s found her own idol. If only her 11th-grade teacher Sister Coronada could see that Christina dreams of the kind of attention the holy martyrs have, and convince Joe and Rita Falcone that their unusual daughter should go to college instead of staying at home working until she’s married. Leone, who played Christopher Moltisanti’s mother on The Sopranos, knows her Catholic-guilt territory, but she also nails the working-class Beantown ethos, with students addressing nuns as “S’tah,” frequent jabs at the Irish from the Italians and vice versa. As you commiserate with Christina and laugh at her very small world’s idiosyncrasies, you’ll almost smell the Sunday sauce on the Falcones’ stove. As Rita says, “Eat. God wants you to eat. It’s not a sin. It’s a sin to waste food.” That could mean anything from an overstuffed sandwich to a slice of ricotta pie, so why not have both? In other words, this brash, witty, slice-of-life book is a feast.

Think Adriana Trigiani writing with a sharpened nib, and pray to your own saints that we’ll read more from Leone soon.