THE BLACK MADONNA

Name: THE BLACK MADONNA
Author: Louisa Ermelino
ISBN: 0-684-87166-1

by Louisa Ermelino ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

All these momma’s boys undermine popular notions of Italian machismo and suggest unexplored relations between old-country...

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A genial debut from Kirkus reviewer Ermelino, a reporter for InStyle, celebrates neighborhood culture, testifies to the power of women in a peasant-based society, and smartly counters the prevailing stereotypes of Italian-Americans from the not-so-mean streets of New York’s Little Italy.

The Italian mommas in Ermelino’s three linked narratives let no men oppress them, but rely on the power of their patroness, the Black Madonna of Viggiano, to solve their earthly dilemmas. Teresa Sabatini, who lives with her young son on Spring Street while her merchant marine husband is fighting the war at sea, endures the constant questions of her nosy neighbors. When her beloved son cripples himself playing Tarzan on the fire escape, Teresa looks to her elusive husband for help and comes up with a double miracle. The second story, set in the ’30s, a decade earlier, explains how Magdalena Caparetti, a young beauty from the old country, manages to snag eligible widower Amadeo Pavese, a successful American merchant visiting his relatives in Italy. With the help of the Virgin’s magic, Amodeo’s aunt and uncle, who rely on his monthly check, combine folklore and foodlore to arrange a suitable match. In the third tale, both Magdalena and Teresa lend their cunning to their haughty neighbor Antoinette Mangiacarne, whose son, Jumbo, once their own sons’ playmate, wants to move away from what passes for his home in the 1960s—he lives with his mother in the same building as his five married sisters and tends bar in the neighborhood in order to settle a bad gambling debt—and marry a Jewish girl from Long Island. The mother-son struggle and the inter-ethnic culture clash result in some fine, and finely climactic, low comedy.

All these momma’s boys undermine popular notions of Italian machismo and suggest unexplored relations between old-country ways and new-world realities: a welcome antidote to “fuhggeddaboudit.”

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-684-87166-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MALAFEMMENA
by Louisa Ermelino

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THE SISTERS MALLONE
by Louisa Ermelino

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.