Thoughtful and readable; sure to please fans of family sagas.
Misurella (Lies to Live By, 2005) portrays the struggles of two Italian families, the Salvaggis and the Maresciallos, as they strive to find their place in America, from the busy streets of New York to hardscrabble life in rural Pennsylvania.
At an Italian wedding in 1960s Pennsylvania, Sonny Salvaggi meets Margo, a young woman who captures his heart. Young Margo had fallen in love with Jack Maresciallo, whose wandering, artistic ways lead to trouble for her and their son, Marcello. Later, Jack attempts to reunite with his son, bringing the families together again as they rehash old loves, losses and a quarry business. A study in ancestry, both familial and cultural, each character lurches under the weight of what it means to be from a particular line and place. Relationships and connections dominate the story, and rich back stories of family secrets, tensions and obsessions motivate each character, giving rise to plenty of drama. At one point, Jack, speaking of meeting Marcello for the first time in a decade, feels that “his love for the boy was…wrapped up with shame,” and in many ways, this sentiment sums up all of the relationships in the book, as characters try to rise above or avoid their mistakes and find new ways of relating. Despite these rich motivations, it can be slightly difficult to tell the characters apart, and the story’s tendency to jump across time can be confusing. The dialogue is sometimes clunky, with characters stating their motivations perhaps too clearly and readily to be entirely realistic. Nevertheless, the author’s knowledge of and engagement with Italian-American history shines through, and readers interested in the Italian-American experience will find plenty to appreciate.
Thoughtful and readable; sure to please fans of family sagas.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1599540429
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Bordighera Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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