An unforgettable re-creation of a vanished way of life.
In this luminous coming-of-age story, a boy absorbs the joys—and terrors—of life in an Italian village.
As the book chronicles a year in the life of a lad growing up on a small farm with his little sister and tensely dissatisfied working-class parents, the small town of La Croce offers a voluminous series of vivid set-pieces of peasant life. There are the sunlit mountain vistas and the timeless rhythms of wheat and grape harvests, arcane rites for warding off the evil eye, religious pilgrimages and knotty discussions of the Trinity, luscious meals and evenings spent at the boy’s warm-hearted grandparents’ farmhouse up the hillside, chasing fireflies and listening to tales of ruthless brigands, intrepid saints, philandering husbands and wives who get the last laugh. The boy’s existence revolves around small triumphs and sorrows—schoolyard fights, glimpses of an enchanting red-haired girl, the longing for a cowboy outfit like the ones in the movies—but he grows aware of darker undercurrents in his idyllic life: his father’s bitter class resentment, born of gnawing economic uncertainty; the gory slaughter of livestock that leaves the boy feeling guilt-stricken; smiling predators who lurk within the close-knit community. Working from his protagonist’s limited but keen perspective, Anonymo paints a sweeping social panorama of Italy in the ’60s, an era when rural life was yielding to a disruptive but hopeful modernity. La Croce is still ruled by age-old peasant verities such as the fearful understanding that “compared to hunger and pain, the rest of life is hardly real.” But also on the boy’s horizons are the Beatles and the Volkswagen Beetle, harbingers of an exciting future of glamour and pleasure; and weighing on everyone’s mind is the daunting, thrilling possibility of emigration to America. The author writes with a subtle, evocative prose that is at once earthy and lyrical. The boy’s fictive world emerges with such vibrant immediacy and immersive detail that we feel a powerful sense of loss when it starts to crumble.
An unforgettable re-creation of a vanished way of life.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-1453659977
Page Count: 416
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
