From Amazon
Nothing can be hidden in a small village, and little is forgiven. In Nino Ricci's
Lives of the Saints, the constricted mores of the villagers of Valle del Sole in the Italian Apennines come into severe conflict with Cristina, a local woman whose husband left for the United States years before and who has been impregnated by a secret lover. Ricci's engaging novel explores, through the eyes of Christina's seven-year-old son Vittorio, the superstition and narrow-mindedness of rural Italy, in a visually rich style that brings to mind the view of Italian life offered in such films as Fellini's
Amarcord or the Taviani brothers'
Padre Padrone.
Cristina, an independent spirit, sees her life turned into hell by her relatives and neighbours. Vittorio suffers too, although he is befriended by a compassionate teacher and the local goatherd. A grand and brooding pathos emanates from Cristina's difficult relationships with her relatives, but the novel carries a depth of humour as well. When Christina is bitten by a snake and taken to the hospital, the long trip down the mountains in the village's only car and the scene at the crowded hospital are both hysterically funny. Ricci's finely wrought novel spent months on the Canadian bestseller lists when it first appeared in 1990, beginning a trilogy that also includes In a Glass House and Where She Has Gone. --Mark Frutkin
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
When young Vittorio Innocente's mother, Cristina, is bitten by a snake during an encounter with a blue-eyed stranger in the family barn, the superstitions and prejudices rampant in their small Italian town immediately roil to the surface. But the worst is yet to come for the independent-minded Cristina. Eight months pregnant and unable to abide her treatment in the village any longer, Cristina books a passage to Canada for herself and Vittorio, although it will not be to join her irascible husband Mario, who sailed there when Vittorio was an infant. A national bestseller for seventy-five weeks,
Lives of the Saints won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Bressani Prize. It is the first novel in the Vittorio Innocente Trilogy.
