Juliet Grames

I feel as confused by Juliet Grames’ The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia as the plot and mess of characters often felt. In 1960, Francesca arrives in the tiny, Italian village to open a nursery school, but she faces challenges beyond the isolation and old-fashioned ideas of the citizens. I love the complicated main character, Francesca, and the old woman, Cicca, whom she lives with and forms an emotional bond with. Grames’ world-building astounds as she creates this dream-like village in the Calabrian mountains that time forgot. But good grief, the quantity of unnecessary characters burdened with perplexing names — and nicknames! — that makes the convoluted plot lines almost unfollowable. Readers unafraid of this Gordian knot of a novel and seeking an escape into the gorgeous and believable Italian countryside where mysteries abound should try The Lost Boys of Santa Chionia.… (mehr)

This a fascinating and sometimes horrifying story about the life and near‑deaths of Stella Fortuna, an Italian immigrant born in a remote mountain village shortly after the first world war. It's presented as a fictionalized biography of the author's grandmother and would have been convincing as such if the toxic masculinity of several family members had been toned down. I’ve got to admit the middle dragged a bit and I got frustrated with Stella’s obstinacy more than a few times but the revelations near the end wouldn’t have had the same impact if this had been shorter. It’s one of the most expressively narrated audiobooks I’ve listened to - I don’t know that I would've felt the same connection to Stella's story if I'd read the print version instead.… (mehr)

This book was fucking devastating. The first 2/3 or so felt like Big Fish or even History of Love, just spectacular character portraits and suspense/drama with the flash-forward in time (being told by the granddaughter), beautifully evocative descriptions of Calabria and quirky yet completely awful tales of near-death. Just goddamn good storytelling!!!

THEN. Fucking Carmelo and his bullshit, and Stella being incapable of telling ANYONE about her father, leading to decades of sadness and neglected children and then OOPS child molestation and incest??!?! Fuck.

I loved reading this book (except for the last third) but I can’t recommend it to anyone because it hurt too much. Yet another reason for comprehensive sex Ed beginning in preschool and outlawing lobotomies. Sigh.… (mehr)