A studied novel about a volatile time in both American and Italian history.
A historical novel about Italian Americans in the 20th century.
Heckenlively introduces a Sicilian named Vincenzo Nicosia, who’s merely a boy when his father receives a 20-year sentence for beating up a jeweler in 1907.It’s a major blow to Vincenzo’s family; his mother is even forced into sex work to make ends meet. The youngster places the blame for his family’s plight on the local Duke du Taormina, a man named Alessandro de Leone, whom he feels is responsible for his father’s tough sentence. Years later, a politician named Benito Mussolini is building a following; he has many enemies, one of whom happens to be Alessandro. Mussolini offers a deal to Vincenzo: If he kills the duke, Mussolini will free his father—and give him the duke’s property, to boot. Vincenzo shoots the duke, but then his entire family is murdered by Mussolini’s thugs, so he decides to flee Sicily for America. In San Francisco, after years of hard work and ruthlessness, he winds up running a successful construction business. He also falls in love with a widow named Jacquetta Mercurio,who, as chance would have it, is the daughter of Alessandro. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Jacquetta’s nephew Alex Falcone enlists in the U.S. Army. His platoon fights their way from North Africa and on into Italy, where he’s wounded. In Sicily, he learns more about his grandfather Alessandro, the “Lion of Sicily.” Alex will go on to become much more involved in the future of the country than he ever imagined.
This account of Italy and the impact of its fascism makes for some intriguing, often overlooked history, such as the fate of the Italian monarchy following the war, as well as Western fears about a potential communist takeover of the country. By contrast, Vincenzo’s time in America is more familiar; this part of the book shows how he struggled to find work and master English before his rise to become a man of power, but it’s not particularly novel. He was, after all, a man who once cut a deal with Mussolini, so his later, cruel decisions, such as firing a friend as soon as he becomes a foreman, are unsurprising. But he’s not involved with the Italian American Mafia, which allows for some nuance, although he shows himself to be quite capable of committing a Mafia-like murder. Still, the question remains of just how aggressive he’ll become. Even after Vincenzo has a daughter with Jacquetta, there’s no telling who might raise his ire in the competitive world of San Francisco construction. Things kick up a notch when Alex enters World War II. Although readers will, of course, know how the war ends, they can’t predict the extent of Alex’s involvement; he witnesses some lesser-known terrors of the fighting in Italy, such as the massacre at the Ardeatine Caves. Although Vincenzo’s quest isn’t as engaging as Alex’s, the work ably portrays the clash between an old world and a modern one.
A studied novel about a volatile time in both American and Italian history.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781956763959
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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