Customer Reviews

The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego

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Lazaro and Eleonora Cara immigrated from Italy to New York with their daughter Rosari. Eleonora battled mental illness and when she was found dead, Lazaro and Rosari decided it was time to start over, so they moved to San Francisco. There, Rosari married Guiseppe Verbicaro and they had 6 children. Guiseppe worked hard and they led a fairly normal life. When Guiseppe was 79, he left Rosari for a young, pregnant prostitute. Her son, Jesús, would change this family forever.

The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego is more like a series of short stories (about different members of the family) than a novel, and this concept didn't really work well for me. While Addiego's writing is beautiful, I found parts of the book rambling and redundant and there were so many characters I found myself wondering who I was reading about at times. The beginning and the end of the book meshed well for me but a lot of the middle just seemed unnecessary.

. . . a great debut, with loads of wit, atmosphere, and a ton of heart . . . think middlesex with italians in san francisco . . . it's really pretty impressive how much ground addiego covers in these linked stories, and how fluidly he covers it-- from calabria to the s.f., from prohibition to the dawn of the new millennium . . . another great offering from an indie press . . .

Whenever a book starts with the diagram of a family tree, you know you're in for a lot of characters. Instead of trying to figure out how everyone connects, it's best to dive into the charm of The Islands of Divine Music.

This isn't a jaunt into tropical magical realism, like the title suggests, but it does borrow from it and it lands there at the end. We travel with the Verbicaro family through cholera epidemics in Southern Italy, the big earthquake in San Francisco, Cold War paranoia, after-effects of the Vietnam War, Native American protests at Alcatraz, migratory farm worker life in the Western United States, and end with religious fervor in Mexico. Somehow, this works seamlessly in author John Addiego's capable hands.

Corvallis, Ore., resident Addiego is the author of numerous stories and poems, and is the former poetry editor at the Northwest Review. The Islands of Divine Music is his first novel. It is one of those books you have to read to experience the nuanced details, the deft language, and the intriguing characters. Addiego's poetry background is felt in every page. Fortunately, he also has a novelist's knowledge of his characters. Even though The Islands of Divine Music is only 241 pages, it's a large story, but the scope of its characters is intimate.

We start in Southern Italy with the matriarch, Rosari, as a child. Her father moves their family from their cholera-ridden village in Calabria to live in Naples. Rosari can read and write at a time when only one out of ten people in Naples is literate. A local criminal pays her to write a letter for him and his associate. She agrees because she has a crush on the handsome criminal and doesn't understand that she is writing a kidnapping letter.

Once I read the letter, I knew I was in for an entertaining story:

Esteemed Sir, Please excuse this intrusion into your private affairs. Financial difficulties, as well as recent illnesses in my family, have forced me into the position in which I find myself. My associate and I must come to your hotel this afternoon and kidnap you. Be entirely assured that no harm will come to you, and that your freedom will be immediately reinstated once a ransom of five thousand lire, or the equivalent in your British pounds, has been transferred to you by wire from your most highly esteemed family in Great Britain. It is my greatest hope that, once I have received this money, you will continue your travels in the sunny South. Perhaps you will see the ruins at Pompeii? Of course, that is your affair, not mine. I only wish you the least inconvenience during this kidnap, as well as many happy returns to our beautiful city.

The British man finds the kidnapping to be a lark, but his father gives the police twice the ransom to hunt down the criminals. They are arrested in a bar where they are playing pinochle and sharing chianti with their victim. While the criminals await hanging in the town square, the police search for the third accomplice, the one who wrote the letter since the two men are illiterate. As a result, Rosari's father takes her and his wife to start anew in America.

I could have spent a little longer in Italy, but this book and family aren't meant for there. They arrive in New York, but only stay long enough to lose Rosari's mother, a woman who had a habit of disappearing anyway. Soon we land in San Francisco, where most of the novel takes place, and Rosari marries Giuseppe, a man twice her age. For him, "printed words were like ants on a tablecloth." He is an unusually strong man and talks with God, who shows him through the Great Earthquake of 1906 how to make a living in America: clearing rubble. His sons later create a family business of building, instead of wrecking like their father. Rosari and Giuseppe's children and grandchildren are granted different chapters to relate aspects of their lives, and each is engrossing in its own way.

One of my favorite interactions is between Giuseppe and his about-to-be second wife. Addiego introduces the moment well: "When Giuseppe was seventy-nine years old, he decided to marry Maria Guadalupe Diego, a seventeen-year-old prostitute." Standing on the steps of a church overlooking Washington Square, "he got the notion that God wanted him to remarry...And even though Giuseppe was currently married, God told him to do it again." Maria doesn't tell Giuseppe she is pregnant, and even though he is physically unable to have sex, Giuseppe takes the birth of Jesús as a miracle and believes Maria is a virgin. After Giuseppe's death, Maria and Jesús flee dangerous men and work on migrant farms across the western United States. Their stories intermix with the Verbicaro clan's. Jesús comes in and out of the story and adds a dab of magical realism. The religious overtones of Mary and Jesús are revisited towards the end of the book with the mystery of Jesús bringing family members back together in a satisfying way.

Joe is Rosari's youngest child, and his children end the book. Among them are an underage son who requests to be sent to Vietnam and comes back addicted to heroin, a daughter who joins the anti-war movement and flees after a protest takes an unexpected turn, a Down's Syndrome daughter who is part of a funny and depressing scene with a mean Santa, a lesbian daughter who visits Italy and Rosari's village on her own quest, and another son who becomes, not surprisingly, a writer.

There is real heart in The Islands of Divine Music, and a sense of how lives brush up against one another, especially in a large family. We end in Mexico, on an island called Isla Mujeres, the Island of Women, and enjoy a nice surprise that makes the experience come full circle. Just like in our lives, there are many stories on the margins that are left untold, and add to a larger felt experience. There will be a character or two that you wish you could have spent more time with, and maybe some you're not as interested in, but you won't regret spending your time with the Verbicaro family and losing yourself in The Islands of Divine Music.
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