Convincing historical fiction with a spiritual slant.
A sequel dramatizes the conflict between fascism and its opponents in Italy and North Africa.
In 1938, Giovanni and Susanna Martellino’s vineyard is foundering, and Alfredo Obizzi, her former lover and a prominent Fascist legislator, gets revenge by blocking potential loans. Isabella Carollo, the wife of the couple’s winemaker and the series’ spiritual guru, encourages Susanna to ask her sister and brother-in-law for assistance. They agree to fund the vineyard—if the Martellinos will hide Jewish refugees. In the nearly eight years that follow, the events that befall these two central families reveal the breadth of Italy’s reach and the variety of World War II experiences. The Martellinos’ son, DeAngelo, travels to Benghazi, Libya, to compare techniques at the Romero family’s vineyard. The Romeros praise Il Duce’s modernization of North Africa, but DeAngelo points out that Mussolini’s latest manifesto has robbed Jews of their jobs and property. When the war heats up, DeAngelo helps Italian families escape Libya and later joins the Resistance. Meanwhile, his half brother, Pietro, Susanna’s son by Obizzi, is engaged in trench warfare in Albania and suffers temporary amnesia after a mortar attack. Back home, Susanna and Isabella volunteer at a prison hospital. In a touching second-generation romance, DeAngelo falls for Isabella’s daughter, Lily. As the Nazis ramp up their campaign against the Italian partisans, the stage is set for a gripping finale and a twist ending. Once again, Physioc (The Walls of Lucca, 2018), an Emmy Award–winning sportscaster for the Kansas City Royals and Fox College Basketball, brings wartime Italy to vibrant life. With the Libya material, he adds a layer of interest, bravely tackling colonialism alongside the many other social issues. The book languishes in the middle and could stand to lose 100 pages, but a pacey final third makes up for it. Isabella remains a mostly credible spokeswoman for mindfulness and forgiveness (as in The Walls of Lucca): “Enjoy right now” and “Don’t give anyone power over your thoughts. Don’t let the Fascists…or anyone take your peace.”
Convincing historical fiction with a spiritual slant.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79312-876-8
Page Count: 471
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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