The seven or eight deaths of Stella Fortuna : a novel

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Title:

The seven or eight deaths of Stella Fortuna : a novel

Alternate title:

7 or 8 deaths of Stella Fortuna

Author:

Grames, Juliet, author.

Summary:

For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella's childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents--moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella's own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. In her rugged Italian village, Stella is considered an oddity--beautiful and smart, insolent and cold. Stella uses her peculiar toughness to protect her slower, plainer baby sister Tina from life's harshest realities. But she also provokes the ire of her father Antonio: a man who demands subservience from women and whose greatest gift to his family is his absence. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and Tina must come of age side-by-side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them. Soon Stella learns that her survival is worthless without the one thing her family will deny her at any cost: her independence. In present-day Connecticut, one family member tells this heartrending story, determined to understand the persisting rift between the now-elderly Stella and Tina.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xvi, 445 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Genre:

Domestic fiction.

Historical fiction.

Subject Term:

Families -- Fiction.

Italian Americans -- Fiction.

Immigrants -- Fiction.

Sisters -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers,

Publication Date:

2019

ISBN:

9780062862822

Publication Information:

New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2019]

Call Number:

GRAMES

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003436220	Adult Fiction	GRAMES	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

From Calabria to Connecticut: a sweeping family saga about sisterhood, secrets, Italian immigration, the American dream, and one woman's tenacious fight against her own fate

In her rugged Italian village, Stella is considered an oddity--beautiful and smart, insolent and cold. Stella uses her peculiar toughness to protect her slower, plainer baby sister Tina from life's harshest realities. But she also provokes the ire of her father Antonio: a man who demands subservience from women and whose greatest gift to his family is his absence.

When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and Tina must come of age side-by-side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them. Soon Stella learns that her survival is worthless without the one thing her family will deny her at any cost: her independence.

In present-day Connecticut, one family member tells this heartrending story, determined to understand the persisting rift between the now-elderly Stella and Tina. A richly told debut, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is a tale of family transgressions as ancient and twisted as the olive branch that could heal them.

"Witty and deeply felt." --Entertainment Weekly (New and Notable)

"The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna achieves what no sweeping history lesson about American immigrants could: It brings to life a woman that time and history would have ignored." --Washington Post

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Grames's vivid and moving debut follows its heroine from a childhood in the early 20th century in a tiny Calabrian mountain village to her family's immigration to America when she is 19 and then through a long life including a marriage about which she has decidedly mixed feelings, many jobs, and even more children. When the novel begins in the present, Stella is 100 years old and has been brain-damaged for the past 30 years following a fall that required an emergency lobotomy and that left her with a mysterious hatred for her lifelong best friend, her younger sister Tina. The novel's unnamed narrator, one of Stella's granddaughters, reconstructs her life history with the help of Tina and other family members. She shapes it around Stella's numerous near-death experiences, which include being gored by a pig and choking on a chicken bone. Grames keeps the spotlight on stubborn, independent, and frequently unhappy Stella, while developing a large cast of believably complicated supporting characters and painting sensually intricate portraits of Calabria and Connecticut. With her story of an "ordinary" woman who is anything but, Grames explores not just the immigrant experience but the stages of a woman's life. This is a sharp and richly satisfying novel. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

DEBUT Born three years after the first -Mariastella Fortuna, whose death in 1919 at age three haunts her entire Calabrian village, Grames's prickly antiheroine suffers debilitating accidents and illnesses throughout her unhappy life. She also eschews men, marriage, and sexuality, having witnessed her mother's abuse by her father. The family eventually immigrates to America, arriving in Connecticut not to the promised house but to a moldy third-floor walk-up, but the undaunted Stella develops a sense of agency unfamiliar to women steeped in Italian cultural mores and secrets away a portion of her earnings for an escape plan. Yet she's forced into marriage by her father and, as the babies arrive, mourns her lost independence, disappearing into a space where secrets, superstition, and jealousy thrive. VERDICT Not your typical multigenerational saga, this debut novel proffers a dark version of the female experience, where motherhood leeches life from the soul. Stella is an original character ahead of her time, and readers may be troubled by her negativity and not wholly convinced by her action-but kudos to an author who can evoke such a strong reaction. For fans of Amy Tan or Isabelle Allende. [See Prepub Alert, 11/5/18.]-Sally Bissel, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. System., Fort Myers, FL © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.