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brighroosh 's review for:
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
by Juliet Grames
This book is eminently readable from the start. What does Juliet Grames the author mean by seven or eight deaths? This story follows Stella Fortuna, "Lucky Star" in Italian, throughout her life, recounting her dramatic mishaps/near deaths.
I delighted in the Italian dialect that I recognized from my youth - little words and phrases here and there that resonated with my lived experience. As a matter of fact, those words cannot be found in Google translate, or even in Italian classes. So when I saw them in print, I actually learned how they were spelled and I felt validated about their use. My mother always said would you like a "sangwige." That's what it sounded like to my ears, and my americanized cousins made fun of the pronunciation -" it's sand-wich" they would say. In the book, Grames spells it "sanguicci." So my mother brought this word with her from Italy and with a Neopolitan accent, dropped the "i." The other words were capotost (stubborn, thick head), and cafoni (kind of like saying white trash). My Neoplitan mother put a hard "c" and made it more like "gavone." (Maybe if I had watched "The Sopranos" this wouldn't be as great a revelation!)
Anyway, back to the story...the mishaps became more and more gory, and Stella's life became more and more sad because she was restricted by her father and customs. I understood her need to be on her own, and given the era (WWII and beyond), knew that she would have to conform.
There are graphic descriptions of some really awful things that went on, but bravo to Grames for portraying them. Not every Italian family has the assorted characters in this book, but it does speak to inherited dispositions and behaviors in any family. Religion is front and center, but so are traditional magical incantations, a holdover from before Christianity.
This could be a difficult read for many, but SO interesting!
I delighted in the Italian dialect that I recognized from my youth - little words and phrases here and there that resonated with my lived experience. As a matter of fact, those words cannot be found in Google translate, or even in Italian classes. So when I saw them in print, I actually learned how they were spelled and I felt validated about their use. My mother always said would you like a "sangwige." That's what it sounded like to my ears, and my americanized cousins made fun of the pronunciation -" it's sand-wich" they would say. In the book, Grames spells it "sanguicci." So my mother brought this word with her from Italy and with a Neopolitan accent, dropped the "i." The other words were capotost (stubborn, thick head), and cafoni (kind of like saying white trash). My Neoplitan mother put a hard "c" and made it more like "gavone." (Maybe if I had watched "The Sopranos" this wouldn't be as great a revelation!)
Anyway, back to the story...the mishaps became more and more gory, and Stella's life became more and more sad because she was restricted by her father and customs. I understood her need to be on her own, and given the era (WWII and beyond), knew that she would have to conform.
There are graphic descriptions of some really awful things that went on, but bravo to Grames for portraying them. Not every Italian family has the assorted characters in this book, but it does speak to inherited dispositions and behaviors in any family. Religion is front and center, but so are traditional magical incantations, a holdover from before Christianity.
This could be a difficult read for many, but SO interesting!