Review by Booklist Review
In this long but heartfelt novel, Mazzucco tells the story of 12-year-old Diamante and 9-year-old Vita, who make the arduous journey from Italy to Ellis Island in 1903; their exhilarating, terrifying trip will be the source of a lifelong bond. They make their way to a squalid boardinghouse owned by Vita's gruff, irritable father, where they room with more than a dozen other impoverished immigrants. Vita cooks and cleans all day, while Diamante works long hours at odd jobs, making just enough to pay for his food. When the two increasingly turn to each other for comfort, Vita's father harshly intervenes, and Diamante leaves for Ohio, where he spends years engaged in backbreaking work. Vita, meanwhile, feisty and reckless, opens a restaurant and makes a fortune but longs for the unique connection she shared with her first love. Mazzucco won Italy's Strega Prize for this lavishly detailed novel, which also incorporates nonfiction chapters about her family history. She brings home the isolation and deprivation of the early immigrant experience in a highly accessible and inspirational story for historical fiction fans. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2005 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Inspired storytelling drives this fictionalized narrative, which follows the Italian author's family to 1903 Ellis Island, where 12-year-old Diamante Mazzucco and his cousin Vita, age nine, evolve into star-crossed lovers striving to fulfill their destinies. Earning their keep in the squalid boardinghouse run by Vita's father, the two (along with other relatives) are more or less confined to Prince Street in Manhattan, where they are subject to a horrifying array of abuses and privations. Deeply in love with Vita by the time he is 16 and determined to earn enough to marry her, Diamante signs on with a railroad building crew and unwittingly begins four years of involuntary servitude under conditions that Mazzucco describes in unsparing detail; this underrepresented corner of the East Coast immigrant experience feels as fresh here as it is brutal. Vita, meanwhile, survives three years in reform school and betrayal by a man who seduces her. The narrative throughout is lively, deeply affecting and complex, involving dozens of striving minor characters, some of whom turn to crime. Four-time novelist Mazzucco also interjects nonfiction chapters that relate her search for family members in Italy and the U.S., adding a resonant sleuthing element that further distinguishes this literary take on early-20th-century Italian-America and enduring love. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Drawing on family history, award-winning Italian author Mazzucco tracks two little children sent by their families from southern Italy to America in 1903. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A fictionalized portrait of the author's heroic young ancestors, immigrants to America from Italy. The hardscrabble journey of two immigrants to Ellis Island from Naples in 1903 form the backbone of Italian novelist Mazzucco's long-winded tale: the not-yet-12-year-old boy called Diamante and his nine-year-old cousin Vita, disgorged along with 2,000 other passengers from the Republic, and summoned to the Prince Street boarding house owned by Vita's grocer father, Agnello, to work. There is little enjoyment of childhood for these Little Italy immigrants: Vita helps Agnello's American Circassian mistress, Lena, cook and clean for the boarders (Agnello has a wife back in Tufo), while Diamante has to prove how tough he is by doing dangerous odd jobs such as robbing graves for the suave thuggish boarder, Rocco, who becomes a successful Mafia head. Vita and Diamante swear eternal love for each other, though fate tears them apart when Diamante must leave for work in Ohio, and delinquent Vita is sent to reform school for three years, the only education she'll have. Eventually, she ends up working in the Ansonia Hotel kitchen, marries Rocco (who's already married), then another boarder, before starting up a notable restaurant of her own. Diamante, meanwhile, is crushed by her disloyalty and disillusioned with the miserable lot thrown at uneducated and underpaid Italians like him. Alternate chapters weave in nonfiction elements, with Mazzucco recounting her search for the facts of her grandfather's story. Winner in 2003 of Italy's Strega Prize, this teeming, nostalgic tale should find willing American readers. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
