A first novel of great charm that attempts to penetrate the unique genius of the Italian family, both in Italy and in its American version. Here, a first-generation American teenager summers with her relatives in Calabria, and finds within the sanctuary of family not only an acceptance of her passionate 17- year-old self, but a view into the harsh past of her father, whom she adores and from whom she yearns to be free. ``The Italian part of me has been at war with the American me as long as I can remember.'' Thus speaks Guilia di Cuore, only child of tender, loving widower Nicola—a psychiatrist who arrived in Ohio at age 29 and who's since built walls of restrictions to block off for his adored child the siren songs coming from her peers. Dateless, rebellious Guilia agrees to visit the di Cuore family in Italy, who are set for another sunny summer in a cheerfully crumbling beach cottage—where the overstuffed refrigerator wheezes like a baby, where a beachful of minimally clad neighbors and friends of all ages sun while aunts prepare huge midday dinners. Guilia is happy—and soon headlong in love with Luca, friend of a cousin. Love amid sun and sea and rides on the motorino, clinging to Luca's back, are paradise. Then for the first time in 20 years, Nicola also returns, and behind him Guilia can sense her powerful peasant grandfather. After he leaves, Guilia heads for Rome—with Luca and with a fading fantasy of becoming an Italian housewife and mother. But for her there'll be a final road away from the obligations to both cultures and toward the self. Monardo writes with an easy confidentiality, and her affectionate appraisal of a world of kin, shrewd but without bitterness, might remind one of an early Mary Gordon scan of her Irish/American enclave. An alluring tribute to love—of first love, of family, of Italy.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-42606-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
Thinness aside: riveting stuff, with language so frank it curls your hair.
Debut novel by hip-hop rap artist Sister Souljah, whose No Disrespect(1994), which mixes sexual history with political diatribe, is popular in schools countrywide.
In its way, this is a tour de force of black English and underworld slang, as finely tuned to its heroine’s voice as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. The subject matter, though, has a certain flashiness, like a black Godfather family saga, and the heroine’s eventual fall develops only glancingly from her character. Born to a 14-year-old mother during one of New York’s worst snowstorms, Winter Santiaga is the teenaged daughter of Ricky Santiaga, Brooklyn’s top drug dealer, who lives like an Arab prince and treats his wife and four daughters like a queen and her princesses. Winter lost her virginity at 12 and now focuses unwaveringly on varieties of adolescent self-indulgence: sex and sugar-daddies, clothes, and getting her own way. She uses school only as a stepping-stone for getting out of the house—after all, nobody’s paying her to go there. But if there’s no money in it, why go? Meanwhile, Daddy decides it’s time to move out of Brooklyn to truly fancy digs on Long Island, though this places him in the discomfiting position of not being absolutely hands-on with his dealers; and sure enough the rise of some young Turks leads to his arrest. Then he does something really stupid: He murders his wife’s two weak brothers in jail with him on Riker’s Island and gets two consecutive life sentences. Winter’s then on her own, especially with Bullet, who may have replaced her dad as top hood, though when she selfishly fails to help her pregnant buddy Simone, there’s worse—much worse—to come.
Thinness aside: riveting stuff, with language so frank it curls your hair.Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02578-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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