Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
An Italian Wife
An Italian Wife | Ann Hood
2 posts | 5 read | 3 to read
From the best-selling author of The Obituary Writer, the stirring multigenerational story of an Italian-American family. An Italian Wife is the extraordinary story of Josephine Rimaldi—her joys, sorrows, and passions, spanning more than seven decades. The novel begins in turn-of-the-century Italy, when fourteen-year-old Josephine, sheltered and naive, is forced into an arranged marriage to a man she doesn't know or love who is about to depart for America, where she later joins him. Bound by tradition, Josephine gives birth to seven children. The last, Valentina, is conceived in passion, born in secret, and given up for adoption. Josephine spends the rest of her life searching for her lost child, keeping her secret even as her other children go off to war, get married, and make their own mistakes. Her son suffers in World War One. One daughter struggles to assimilate in the new world of the 1950s American suburbs, while another, stranded in England, grieves for a lover lost in World War Two. Her granddaughters experiment with the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll in the 1970s. Poignant, sensual, and deeply felt, An Italian Wife is a sweeping and evocative portrait of a family bound by love and heartbreak.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
Maggie_Reads
An Italian Wife | Ann Hood
post image
Pickpick

This book got me out of my reading funk. If you don‘t like descriptive sex scenes, especially of non consensual kinds, stay away. Otherwise its a different kind of book that kept me engaged. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4635953503

review
reciprokate
Italian Wife | Ann Hood
Mehso-so

Pairs well with: fast food, whiskey sours

Rating: If Hood's descriptions and sentences were not strung together with skill, I would have set this aside early on. The characters were a batch of bad apples.

Trigger warnings: date rape, molestation, PTSD, drug use, unplanned pregnancy. Most of these topics are presented within time periods that did not have these terms or public awareness of them - which made it even more uncomfortable to read.