Customer Reviews

The Art of Family: Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality

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The Art of Family is one of the most thought-provoking and insightful books I've ever read. Through delightful, sometimes funny, and often poignant stories the author demonstrates how incorporating rituals, imagination and spirituality into everyday living can make for a fuller and richer family experience. This is a book I savored. Each paragraph gave me moment to pause and reflect. I have recommended this book to my friends, family members, and to those with whom I work. Everyone can get something out of this book.

While reading this book, you'll wish, like I do, that you were luckly enough to have the author in your own family, so inspirational are her stories! But she doesn't write a "formula" to happier family lives--instead, she describes with wit and much love the kinds of rituals, events, and attitudes that help families and their members create meaning for themselves, for entire lives. Using her unique perspective and her anthropologist's training in observing people, she blends the wisdom of her own experience (and those of her family and friends) with her knowledge of other cultures and traditions, from which we can learn a great deal. This book's hilarious and touching examples have given me the courage to actively contemplate and begin planning how my family's life together can be richer and more rewarding.

I have the pleasure of working with Gina in a children's program. I enjoy my time with her and was happy she put her wisdom into a book for me to have at all times. I have given this book to my sister and my friend who is pregnant for the first time. I recommend not only to people with families but to people like me whose friends are family. The book added a quality and richness to my everyday life. How I interact with people is forever changed...

The Art of Family is inspirational in the original meaning of the word--it makes you want to be the right kind of parent, and person. By "right" I only mean happy, available, and enjoying the rewards of kids--remembering why you wanted a family in the first place. With her humor and her empathy, Bria speaks directly to every kind of mom--the one who appears together on the outside, but who feels something is missing on the inside, to the one who feels she just hasn't "gotten it" yet. I love this book and I'm giving copies to all my friends--the together ones and the not so.

I had never been a true believer in marriage or family until i happened to pick this book up during a 30 minute break that i had at work. I savored every sentence and saw my emotions rise up. This book brought me to the realization that love/marriage/family are all part of us and they need to be nurtured/adored/respected as such. Not only did my views of marriage change from this book, but i am now engaged to be married!

Gina's style of writing is excellent and i hope she is writing more books!

Bria's book is different because she's not a psychologist or sociologist, but an anthropologist. They always have a unique take on things and her book does, too. It is not a how-to book designed to mislead a reader into thinking she or he can create a perfect family. Rather, Bria has compiled stories and customs from other cultures that are meant to inspire the reader into making their own unique family life better. It's easy to read and, unlike so many of these "experts," this woman has a sense of humor!!!!

Gina Bria, the ritual anthropologist, appeared in Orvieto, Italy, on the border between Tuscany and Umbria, in the spring of 2005, and declared, "The swallows are gathering."

It was an auspicious moment which filled the town with great scholars from around the world contemplating eschatological wisdom, and gifted theatre professionals from New York and Italian stages united in the re-creation of "Mystery Plays" from the 13th Century through the streets. There were many locals, only a few tourists and a few devotees of Luca Signorelli, whose exquisite paintings on the ceiling of the Duomo are as thrilling as his work in the Sistine Chapel in The Vatican, alongside that of his friend and colleague, Michelangelo.

My wife, Chantal and I were among the Signorelli devotees tracing my maternal ancestry.

Gina Bria appeared to us late one night as we followed the actors in rehearsal winding through the darkened streets and alleys of Orvieto. Unlike the actors, the light emanating from her was not a reflection of hand-held stage lights. It was an unmistakable rich, angelic glow of love and peace. During the week that followed many were touched by her angelic light.

That very glow also emanates from the pages of her book, THE ART OF FAMILY, and is, probably at this very moment, inspiring someone with the radiance of its words. Take the time to read this; you, and your family, will be enriched by it.

Ange Lobue, MD, MPH, BSPharm