A rigorously researched tale about a union leader that’s brimming with historical insights and thrilling drama.
A historical novel focuses on a legendary union organizer and anarchist during the 20th century.
Angela Bambace is born in Brazil in 1898 and spends the first year of her life in Calabria, though Harlem is the initial place she calls home. Not yet a teenager, she witnesses the gruesome carnage at a garment factory that burns down to the ground on aptly named Misery Lane, a catastrophe that claims the lives of more than 140 workers, mostly immigrants and women. Nevertheless, Bambace follows her mother’s example out of economic necessity and becomes a seamstress, burdened by long hours and meager compensation. But she begins organizing for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and participates in the historically significant strikes of 1919, watershed events in the transformation of labor dissatisfaction into a political movement, astutely portrayed by Lamphier (Iron Widow, 2019). Bambace is compelled to put her aspirations on hold when her father forces her into an arranged marriage with Romolo Camponeschi, an abusive husband with whom she bears two children. But she eventually leaves him—he sues her for divorce and full custody of the children—and falls in love with Luigi Quintiliano, a lawyer who worked for the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti. Bambace eventually moves to Baltimore to organize for the ILGWU, a temporary assignment that grows into a permanent, high-ranking post. This novel is part of the Mentoris Project, which highlights notable Italians and Italian Americans. In these pages, the author deftly captures not only the social unrest of the time and the ghastly conditions under which laborers were compelled to work, but also the plights of female employees and Italians, both often cruelly dismissed by their counterparts. Lamphier shows Bambace tirelessly fighting for the rights of all workers, though her name is tarnished by her ideological association with anarchists, an affinity she proudly defends: “I am an anarchist because I believe people, all people, have the right to live with dignity, to work for a living wage, and to make real choices about their lives.” This is a historically edifying book, skillfully depicting both the tumultuous times and Bambace’s considerable contributions.
A rigorously researched tale about a union leader that’s brimming with historical insights and thrilling drama.Pub Date: July 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947431-24-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Barbera Foundation, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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