A touching account of family dysfunction as it exists side by side with loving, close-knit relationships.
A multigenerational exploration of the impact of southern Italian heritage on the offspring of immigrants who came to America at the turn of the 20th century.
Divorced and later alienated from her only child, Arianna Naso decides to plumb the depths of her Italian-American upbringing, in search of a pattern that could explain the chaos that she feels rules her personal life. The book begins as memoir, with Arianna recalling a pivotal 1963 trip to Florida when she was a rebellious teenager. It then lurches forward to 2008, pausing to present Arianna’s three-chapter manuscript of a biography of her great-grandparents Angelina Rotolo and Orazio Longo. With two babies in tow, Angelina and Orazio left the small, poverty-stricken village of Rutino, Italy, to find a better life in Brooklyn, New York. Enduring hardships and discrimination, the family nonetheless experienced financial success. Arianna’s mission, however, is to understand the darker side of the family dynamic, particularly the heavy drinking and violently abusive treatment of women. As she digs into Angelina’s past, she discovers the mythologies handed down from the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Arabs, and finally the Spaniards, all of whom settled in southern Italy before the country was unified in 1861. Feola (George Bishop, 1997) debuts as a novelist with a complicated text that alternates between past and present and between first- and third-person narratives. Through her protagonist, Arianna, she creates an intricate, intimate portrait of Italian immigration to the United States and of subsequent generations of Italian-Americans who grew up within the confines of their parents’ and grandparents’ customs and expectations. The author’s work is rich with historical tidbits, but it’s Arianna’s personal struggle to break free from her alcoholic husband, deal with her drug-addicted, emotionally disturbed son, and overcome her own escape mechanisms—including eating disorders and binge shopping—that form the heart of the story.
A touching account of family dysfunction as it exists side by side with loving, close-knit relationships.Pub Date: April 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-938812-41-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Full Court Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
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.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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