Reviews

• Excellent

• So, overall, a great story. You really will get emotionally invested in Diamante and Vita, and many other characters. Some style and format decisions made by the author hurt it the flow a bit, but the story itself and rich characters overcome it. First, I loved the story. The author did an impressive job conveying the immigrant experience in a way I have never seen outside of documentaries. It was not rosy for most immigrants in that era, as it was not rosy for many Americans at that time. But this was just a brutal existence for many especially during this era. Many are unaware the US economy suffered many years long recessions before and after the turn of the century. As the social safety nets didn’t yet exist and diseases running unabated and lack of worker protections, many lived a hand to mouth existence. The author conveys this without manipulation and while showing the humanity of many of those in such dire straits. Her characters are rich and deep, allowing the reader to empathize. I found the inclusion of a Circassian character very interesting. Frankly I knew nothing about the Circassian people nor their history specifially and read up on it while reading Vita. Fits in with the story quite well and the inclusion of a Circassian legend also was a great addition, it took me a while to find more about it. And it came to have more meaning at the end of the story where the author brings together how we think of our histories often filling in gaps with legends. Now some negatives which overall are minor in my view. The first chapter had a few errors: first, she describes the US Army Captain as having stripes on the epaulettes of his uniform; enlisted men’s ranks are referred to as stripes, not officers, a Captain’s rank is two parallel silver bars and Army officers in the field in Europe generally wore rank on their shirt collars and sometimes their helmet/ very rarely if ever on jacket epaulettes. Then later it is described a woman counting the stars on his shoulders… he’s not a General. These are weird errors in an otherwise much researched novel. I mean all the author had to do was watch an old WWII movie, or visit a museum (like when she was in the US). Ask someone as she did for the UK battle details, she apparently spoke with a dozen or more UK WWII experts and veterans. Minor detail but just seemed ametuerish. But this was immediately followed up with another error. The backcover said Diamante and Vita left for America in 1930 at ages 12 and 9, respectively. In the scene in Tufo in 1944 the Captain is said to be 24. There are clues in the story this person is somehow connected to Vita or Diamante, if not Diamante himself. If this were Diamante he would be 26 so I assumed it must not be him or maybe the author or translator made another error in ages? But then at the end of this chapter another unidentified person (the author I believe) speaking as a narrator in 1st person POV (the part with the Captain was 3rd Person limited POV) says Diamante and Vita went to America in 1903. Which reminded me that when I read about the book one thing that attracted me was the story of two Italian immigrants who arrived shortly after the turn of the century, as did my great grandparents who came from Abruzzo and Sicily. So I assumed the back blurb of 1930 was a typo and quickly details confirmed this. And it was then clear this Captain was not Diamante but likely some younger relative of Vita, and/or maybe Diamante. This error wasn’t on the author but on the publisher so I won’t hold that against the book but just an FYSA of you get a copy like this. Another first chapter annoyance. We are told one character is a “stone breaker”. Is that supposed to be a stone cutter? The phrase “stone breaker” continues throughout, I’ve never heard nor could I find it used anywhere as a job or slang term for a job. Was it a perjorative way to describe an occupation (maybe stonecutter) in Italian that doesn’t have a slang English counterpart so we get this literal translation? Or did the translator just not translate it correctly? I don’t know but it was weird everytime stone breaker came up. If it were a pejorative or slang it likely wouldn’t have been used throughout by various characters in various contexts, so I suspect it was a bad translation. I also didn’t care for the switching POV and the unidentified narrator. I came to understand this was the author… Or was it a character based on the author. Switching 1st to 3rd person POV back and forth is very difficult to pull off, and I didn’t care for how it was done here in the beginning. It was my understanding the author created a fictional story based on real persons in her family history… but if that is the case with the story of Diamonte and Vita and the others, when the author interupted this fictional story so early and abruptly as I started to buy into the characters to tell us how she came to create the fictional story… well that ruins it. It would be like watching a movie where you really like the characters and get into the story and every fifteen minutes or so the story pauses and the screenwriter tells you details of where he was and what he was doing when he created the characters and story. I lost interest and almost quit reading. They had become characters again, not people. Does she not understand how important suspension of disbelief is? Or did she feel this enhanced the story, in that it created the idea in my mind that these characters were real and she discovered it in her research… even though she pokes holes in this effort, if thats what is was, by writing she hit a lot of dead ends in her research. Was that the intention, remind the reader that even though the characters are from her family and their lives, the story is fiction. Or perhaps the opposite, that was part of the effort and effect by making this point unclear, combined with the time jumps, it somehow created the effect of realism? Maybe that is all assumption by me but that is how I see the effect at least for me. I noted these things, they jumped out at and took me out of the strory but eventually they seemed to work. By the end I am wondering if Vita even existed. So I got past these style issues as I found the story of the older characters so intriguing and well done. At one point I noticed she had a brief section where Dy recounts a battle in 1st person POV. This was a pretty seemless transition, well done again by the author. But I still felt she kind of made it harder for herself than necessary with these POV shifts. I also recall one part late in the book where we are with Vita in 3rd person POV and the word “us” is used (not in dialogue) instead of “them”. It stuck out as an unintentional error. Last issue. This also has nothing to do with the story, but is the publisher’s fault. Throughout the text lines get squished down and were somewhat hard to read. As if the pages were poor quality photocopies. Combined with the “1930” error on the backcover this publisher did a poor job. Not going to affect my review rating though.

• libro splendido, ma da un certo momento in poi alquanto confuso..E' una fatica, tuttavia che Val la pena di fare!!!

• The book is fine. I will have to purchase it again. I had bought it in January but left it on the plane on my way to South Korea. The recent copy I purchased was in such bad shape (moldy) that I immediately threw it in the garbage. That's what you get when you purchase a book for $0.01. It would be best for Amazon not to offer books in such condition.

• I enjoyed it very much. The rough & tumble lives of the immigrants sailing, en masse into NYC at the turn of the century. Many of the main characters are ancestors of the author.

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