A journalist’s carefully plotted story shines in its depiction of Italian culture.
A man’s return to his childhood home in Italy connects him to the controversial attempts to restore an old church.
The new novel from Costanzo (Graphic Times, 2008) first follows Carlo Strazzi, a teacher in the fictional mountain town of Roccamonti in the province of Calabria, Italy, where life centers on family ties and the crumbling church of Santa Prisca. Carlo’s brother, his brother’s wife and their son are leaving for America when old disputes come tumbling to the fore, involving the first and second restoration attempts of the church. Later, Stefano Strazzi returns to his home of Roccamonti to visit his uncle, Carlo, and becomes a benefactor of the third attempt to restore the church. Roccamonti and the slow pace of life along Via della Scala renews Stefano, and he finds he is prolonging his stay, much to the anger of his wife, who is waiting for him to join her. Stefano learns of the debate surrounding the previous restoration attempts and the anger Carlo feels toward the whole charade. As Stefano becomes reacquainted with the town of his childhood, he also becomes intertwined in the drama that continues his uncle’s bloodlust for revenge. Constanzo only reveals the intricacies of the plot at the very end of the novel, a tell-tale sign of the author’s affinity for mystery writing. The foundation of the story is laid out well, with a journalist’s attention to facts, but also working poetry and the Italian language into writing that is otherwise unemotional. While Costanzo grounds the story in the telling of Strazzi family history, the characters of the town of Roccamonti and the mystifying back story, the climax comes late with the resolution feeling rushed and confused. Despite the shaky ending, Costanzo’s second novel is bolstered by his intimate knowledge of life in an Italian village.
A journalist’s carefully plotted story shines in its depiction of Italian culture.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-936185313
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Charles River
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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