If You Eat, You Never Die: Chicago Tales [Paperback]

Tony Romano (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2008

In a neighborhood on Chicago's outskirts, Fabio and Lucia Comingo have built a new American life—and struggle to comprehend the influences that distract and change their restless young sons. Through this masterful evocation of a time and place, Tony Romano, the acclaimed author of When the World Was Young, brings a first-generation Italian American family vividly and poignantly alive in closely related tales at once joyous, heartbreaking, and honest. Weaving two dozen stories into a stunning, cohesive family history, Romano gives readers hope for togetherness amid the painful generational cycle of loss and redemption—as children grow and learn, and decide which treasures of cultural inheritance they will cherish.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this haunting collection of linked short stories, Romano (When the World Was Young) explores the Italian immigrant experience in Chicago. Primarily set in the 1950s, several stories are narrated by Michelino and Giacomo as boys. These stories expand to include tales told through the eyes of their mother, Lucia, and later their own wives and daughters. Romano also examines the family from the outside in, such as the story No Balls, when Giacomo's coach vents his frustration when Lucia forces her son to eat so much that he's overweight for his wrestling match. In Comic Books, Giacomo learns a difficult lesson when he sees how his friend Angelo earns a motorbike from a local merchant. The overwhelming themes of love, loss, grief, struggle and isolation are expressed in unsentimental and sometimes even desperate prose. Dreams, and the failure to reach those dreams, choices, risks and settling (or not settling) permeate this moving collection of tales that will stay with the reader long after the book is shut. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

Italian-born Lucia struggles with English, her husband Fabio’s lack of ambition, and the willfulness of her American sons, Giacomo (Jimmy) and Michelino (Michael), and channels all her love and fury into cooking. In masterfully distilled stories of the Comingos turned Cummings, Romano illuminates a Chicago neighborhood and an entire universe of dreams and disappointments. All the psychological luster of his debut novel, When the World Was Young (2007), is found here curiously amplified by the restraint of the shorter form. Romano narrates fluently from different points of view, juxtaposing Italy-set stories of Lucia’s and Fabio’s youths with dramatic coming-of-age episodes in the Chicago lives of their sons, spiraling back and forward in time to reveal secrets, shame, regret, and relief. In bruising encounters, husbands and wives struggle over money and responsibility, and children reject smothering parental love, while everyone pays the price of outsiderness, assimilation, and thwarted love. Romano has a penetrating eye, respect for life, poise, and deep understanding of how helpless we are when emotions and actions betray reason. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Paperback: 257 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (December 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060857943
• ISBN-13: 978-0060857943
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,941,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Visit Tony Romano's author website at tonyromanoauthor.com, which includes videos, photos, a blog, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Literary Treasure, June 24, 2009

By 

James G. Wyman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: If You Eat, You Never Die: Chicago Tales (Paperback)

Tony Romano's second book is a literary treasure. I've gone back and read "Fixing a Hole" six times. What a great story! "Confidences" is another story that shows Romano at his best. The scenes between Fabio and Serafina, Fabio's first love, are similar to Victoria's scenes with the priest in Romano's novel When the World Was Young. The reader can feel the sexual tension between Serafina and Fabio, and although both move on to other spouses, the reader reflects on the bittersweet fact that all of us have a Serafina or Fabio in our deep and distant pasts. The other amazing thing about this book is the way the stories are arranged. The arrangement is similar to Faulkner's The Unvanquished. The book is not quite a novel, but the stories are all connected to one another. If You Eat, You Never Die deserves high praise. You won't be disappointed reading this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable, December 12, 2010

By 

Mikey-T (AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: If You Eat, You Never Die: Chicago Tales (Paperback)

I enjoyed this book. I grew up in Chicago and I am Italian. I found it interesting and very easy to read. I would recommend this book to any Italian-Chicagoan.