This is the second novel in Nino Ricci's Vittorio Innocente trilogy, following the award-winning The Book of Saints. As the young Italian boy Vittorio Innocente arrives in the New World, leaving the arms of his dying mother for the troubled haven of his father, he and his half-sister Rita must make their way in a farming community whose ways are both magical and forbidding.
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From Publishers Weekly
This sequel to the well-received The Book of Saints again follows the Innocente family, here having left Italy to settle in a Canadian farming community called Mersea on the shores of Lake Erie. Unlike the previous novel, however, this one has only mixed success. The tale is nicely wrought and lovingly written, but it suffers from a thin plot and a morass of self-analysis from its narrator, Vittorio. In 1961, when the novel opens, Vittorio is seven; he and his illegitimate half-sister, Rita, have joined Vittorio's moody father, a greenhouse keeper, who hates the infant Rita because she reminds him of his faithless wife. Vittorio hopes desperately to make a connection with his father, who only withdraws further, living at such a remove from his surroundings that he rarely speaks even to his children. Vittorio's attempts to connect elsewhere, either in Mersea's Italian community or in the surrounding Canadian culture, meet with rejection or misunderstanding. Yet he slowly navigates through the elements of his life, gaining perspective, finding a girlfriend, attending college and traveling to Africa. Rita finally escapes from the family with an awful ruse, better left unrevealed. In places, Ricci tells his tale beautifully, but he seems to have fallen under the spell of his own prose, which, like the protagonist, turns in upon itself a little too deeply.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In this sequel to The Book of the Saints (LJ 5/1/91), young Vittorio Innocente leaves Italy and his dead mother to join his estranged father in Canada. But the shame of his mother's adulterous affair and subsequent death in childbirth poisons life with his embittered father. Emotions explode when his Aunt Theresa arrives with his baby half-sister, Rita, but then like the vegetables they labor to grow under acres of glass in a hostile climate, the Innocentes struggle to fashion a family from the wreckage of dashed hopes. Caught between his father's dark fury and his aloof half-sister, Vittorio struggles to escape the hothouse environment of an immigrant community isolated by custom and language. Ricci adroitly portrays the developing awareness of a child growing into adulthood whose emotional scars barely heal before they are ripped open by fresh revelations. Through Vittorio's brooding sensitivity, Ricci explores what binds these volatile characters into a family as well as what ultimately drives them apart. Recommended for all collections.?Paul E. Hutchison, Bellefonte, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
The town of Mersea rested on a small bluff that looked out over the shores of Lake Erie; and had the waters of that lake not reversed their flow from the Mississippi to St. Lawrence when some catalysm of nature opened up the Niagara Gorge, the few acres of raised land on which Mersea sat might have remained an island, cut off from the mainland by ten or fifteen miles of shallow lake. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The town of Mersea rested on a small bluff that looked out over the shores of Lake Erie; and had the waters of that lake not reversed their flow from the Mississippi to St. Lawrence when some catalysm of nature opened up the Niagara Gorge, the few acres of raised land on which Mersea sat might have remained an island, cut off from the mainland by ten or fifteen miles of shallow lake. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
Format:Paperback
Unlike Lives of the Saints and Where She Has Gone, a longer period of Vittorio's life is portrayed in this book. He's 7 in the begginning and in his mid-twenties in the end. I can't think of another book that exposes the importance of family ties as much as this one. Everyone must read it! It's a masterpiece! There may be better trilogies than that of Ricci's, but I'm afraid I haven't read them.
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
More than with "The Book of Saints," this book has gotten me thinking about the ties of family and their importance. Perhaps because I found it to be a sadder book, I didn't enjoy reading it as much as "Saints," but feel it will stay with me longer.
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Ricci continues to draw us into the life of young Vittorio Innocente through his colorful descriptions. The novel is not as riveting as The Lives of The Saints, but Ricci does paint an excellent picture of the italian immigrant mentality. An excellent novel, it touches on the importance of family as well as the pains and pleasures of adolescence and self-discovery.
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