A little-known historical event is brought to life in this stylized, creative retelling.
A debut novel infused with magic realism in 19th-century Sicily.
Petito-Egielski’s novel uses the history of the small Sicilian village of Bronte as a basis for a tale about unlikely heroes who break free from oppression. The narrator, known as Muntagna, has been living as a hermit far from his home village, where everyone considers him a coward. He’s haunted by the ghost of his cousin Alfiu, who led a peasant revolt against the British landowners but was killed for his bravery. Muntagna earned his reputation as a coward for not taking part in the revolt. Alfiu’s ghost wants Muntagna to look after his daughter, Gratia, whom he knows to be in danger. Muntagna returns to Bronte in the form of a dog and spends his days spying on Gratia through windows and doorways. Alfiu’s widow has gone crazy with grief, but she’s sure her daughter can redeem everything by murdering the wealthy landowners in the castle. Gratia’s life is a difficult one; thankfully, though, Muntagna’s wife, Vincenza, keeps an eye on her. Shunned by the village for her wild red hair, which villagers fear marks her as a daughter of the devil, Gratia becomes friends with another outcast, a shepherd boy. When a deadly illness sweeps through Bronte, the healing arts that Vincenza has taught her lead to Gratia being called into service at the castle. Now within range of those whom her mother expects her to murder, Gratia finds herself questioning her duty. Touches of magic and fantasy color this historical tale, with Gratia able to summon magical powers to help her in times of need. Muntagna tells the story in a colloquial, sometimes-poetic style with passages such as “ ’Neath the sheets that August night, I was safe from peasant madness. ’Neath the sheets that night, I was a coward through and through.” The narration and dialogue are filled with Italian words and phrases, some translated, some not—a style that further slows the book. Patient readers will be rewarded with a satisfying conclusion.
A little-known historical event is brought to life in this stylized, creative retelling.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989471107
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Amuninni Press
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
