Lucia, Lucia: A Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

Adriana Trigiani (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2005

It is 1950 in glittering, vibrant New York City. Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman’s department store on Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the steadfast Dante DeMartino, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized, and the Sartoris’ honor is tested.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Greenwich Village is a far cry from the rural Virginia of Trigiani's best-selling trilogy (Big Stone Gap; Big Cherry Holler; Milk Glass Moon), but the emotional terrain covered in the author's first novel is warmly familiar. Poignant and feeling, it looks back on the experiences of the beautiful daughter of an Italian-American family in Greenwich Village in the early '50s. Kit Zanetti, a young playwright in present-day New York, accepts an invitation to the apartment of "Aunt Lu," as she is known in their building. Aunt Lu on first glance is an eccentric lady in her 70s who trails around in a fur. Once Kit can be bothered to listen, however, she finds out that Aunt Lu was once the most beautiful girl in Greenwich Village, Lucia Sartori, an intelligent and ambitious seamstress in the custom department at B. Altman's, who's determined not to let the traditions of her loving family lock her into the patterns of the past. When her impending marriage to childhood sweetheart Dante threatens just that, she refuses him, startling her beloved family. Then, fatefully, she meets the dapper John Talbot, who seems the man of her dreams, even draping her in full-length mink, and she ignores the signs that he is trouble and plans marriage. Jilted on her wedding day, Lucia finds out that he is a con man. Despite her pain, she decides to go to California to follow her dream, but when her mother falls ill she does exactly what she was trying to avoid: she becomes the maiden aunt and caretaker of the Sartori clan. Will some well-meant meddling by Kit disarray Lucia's carefully controlled life? This old-fashioned drama wears its heart on its sleeve-subtlety is not its strong suit-but readers will laugh with and weep for Lucia and her lost dreams.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Budding playwright Kit Zanetti is invited to tea by her elderly neighbor, and she is amazed at the apartment full of memorabilia. Her question about a beautiful full-length mink coat begins the story of "Aunt Lu's" long and interesting life. Lucia Sartori, the youngest child and only daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village in the early '50s, is engaged to marry her childhood sweetheart, Dante DiMartino. Almost on the eve of the wedding, Lucia is shocked to learn that his mother expects her to quit her job as a seamstress at B. Altman's department store to stay at home and help her future mother-in-law and to prepare for the children she is expected to have. Lucia resents having to choose between career and marriage, so she breaks the engagement. Later, she meets suave and debonair John Talbot, who sweeps her off her feet. He gives her a beautiful, full-length mink coat. Only after being jilted at the altar does Lucia learn that he is a con man. After this unfortunate event, Lucia's plans to go to California to pursue her career are thwarted when her mother becomes ill. Now she must decide between love and duty or her own happiness. Finely drawn characters move the story along with warmth and humor, relationships in Lucia's big Italian family are lovingly detailed, and there is a strong sense of place. Readers who enjoyed Trigiani's "Big Stone Gap" trilogy (Random) will find that she again tells an engaging story.
Carol Clark, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Fawcett (September 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345472446
• ISBN-13: 978-0345472441
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (116 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,483,549 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bestselling author Adriana Trigiani is beloved by millions of readers around the world for her hilarious and heartwarming novels. Adriana was raised in a small coal-mining town in southwest Virginia in a big Italian family. She chose her hometown for the setting and title of her debut novel, the critically acclaimed bestseller Big Stone Gap. The heartwarming story continues in the novel's sequels Big Cherry Holler, Milk Glass Moon, and Home to Big Stone Gap. Stand-alone novels Lucia, Lucia; The Queen of the Big Time; and Rococo, all topped the bestseller lists, as did Trigiani's 2009 Very Valentine and its 2010 sequel Brava, Valentine.

Trigiani teamed up with her family for Cooking with My Sisters, a cookbook coauthored by her sister Mary, with contributions from their sisters and mother. The cookbook-memoir features recipes and stories dating back a hundred years from both sides of their Italian-American family.

Adriana's novels have been translated and sold in more than 35 countries around the world. Trigiani's latest blockbuster Brava, Valentine (Very Valentine's sequel) debuted at number seven on the New York Times bestseller list following its February 2010 debut. Valentine Roncalli juggles her long-distance romance, as she works to better the family's struggling business. A once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity takes Val from the winding streets of Greenwich Village to the sun-kissed cobblestones of Buenos Aires, where she finds a long-buried secret hidden deep within a family scandal.

Trigiani's first young adult novel, Viola in Reel Life--the first in a series--debuted in September 2009. Fans fell in love with fourteen-year-old filmmaker Viola Chesterton, who moves from Brooklyn to a South Bend, Indiana, boarding school. In Spring 2011, readers will delight in Trigiani's follow-up novel Viola in the Spotlight, as Viola and friends spend an adventure-filled summer vacation in Brooklyn.

Readers will take a peek into the lives of the women who shaped Adriana, with her November 2010 nonfiction debut: Don't Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from my Grandmothers. The book makes a lovely gift for family (or yourself!), as Trigiani shares a treasure trove of insight and guidance from her two grandmothers: time-tested common sense advice on the most important aspects of a woman's life, from childhood to old age.

Fans everywhere will soon see Adriana's work on the big and small screens! She wrote the screenplay for and will direct the big screen version of her novel Big Stone Gap. Adriana has also written the film adaptations of Lucia, Lucia and Very Valentine--which will be made into a Lifetime Original Movie in 2011!

Critics from the Washington Post to the New York Times to People have described Adriana's novels as "tiramisu for the soul," "sophisticated and wise," and "dazzling." They agree that "her characters are so lively they bounce off the page," and that "...her novels are full bodied and elegantly written."

Trigiani's novels have been chosen for the USA Today Book Club, the Target Bookmarked series, and she's now officially a regular with Barnes & Noble Book Clubs, where she has conducted three online book clubs. Adriana speaks to book clubs from her home three to four nights a week.

Her books are so popular around the world that Lucia, Lucia was selected as the best read of 2004 in England by Richard and Judy.

After graduating from Saint Mary's College in South Bend, Indiana, Adriana moved to New York City to become a playwright. She founded the all-female comedy troupe "The Outcasts," which performed on the cabaret circuit for seven years. She made her off-Broadway debut at the Manhattan Theatre Club and was produced in regional theatres of note around the country.

Among her many television credits, Adriana was a writer/producer on The Cosby Show, A Different World, and executive producer/head writer for City Kids for Jim Henson Productions. Her Lifetime television special, Growing Up Funny, garnered an Emmy Award nomination for Lily Tomlin. In 1996, she wrote and directed the documentary film Queens of the Big Time. It won the Audience Award at the Hamptons Film Festival and toured the international film festival circuit from Hong Kong to London.

Adriana then wrote a screenplay called Big Stone Gap, which became the novel that began the series. Adriana spent a year and a half waking up at three in the morning to write the novel before going into work on a television show.

Adriana is married to Tim Stephenson, the Emmy Award-winning lighting designer of The Late Show with David Letterman. They live in Greenwich Village with their daughter, Lucia.

Perhaps one popular book critic said it best: "Trigiani defies categorization. She is more than a one-hit wonder, more than a Southern writer, more than a woman's novelist. She is an amazing young talent

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lucia Lucia -- An Insight into the Italian- American Mindset, December 2, 2005

By 

Diana F. Von Behren "reneofc" (Kenner, LA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lucia, Lucia: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

In her novel, "Lucia, Lucia",author Adriana Trigiani fashions the wonderfully likeable Lucia Sartori, living in 1950s Manhattan caught between the yearning to succeed as a proud career woman and need to follow the traditional route as wife and mother that she is most familiar with as the daughter of a close-knit Italian American family.

Lucia, indisputably "the most beautiful girl in Greenwich Village", believes she can have it all. As her candid voice weaves through the ups and downs of her family life as it tangles with a sophisticated affair that promises to transform Lucia's Americanized buoyancy into a dire Italian pessimism of operatic proportions, the reader cannot help but smile down upon this 23 year old, naïve as she is, and wish for a better conclusion to her cautionary tale.

Perhaps the outcome waxes a bit predictable, but nevertheless, Trigiani authenticates the world of fashion and post-WW2 sensibilities with a seamstress's exquisite detail that would have made Edith Head relinquish one of her Costume Design Oscars for at least a day. Trigiani excels at prolific dialogue that offers insight into the paradoxical expectations for women of that time period. Her chats between the girls at B.Altman's suggest both wisdom and trepidation with regard to the sometimes concentric and sometimes non parallel worlds of men, marriage, career and family.

Best of all is Trigiani's interpretation of the dilemma of second and third generation Italian Americans: to either assimilate into the American mindset by refuting the at times suffocating shackle of family or to entrench further into one's parent's traditional existence. In this sense, Lucia becomes every Italian American woman-- she loves her family, but recoils from the ceiling set by them---she dreams of more and possesses the abilities necessary to attract more---- she allows herself to be seduced by bright lights, romance and ambition, only to come full circle and embrace a simpler sacrificial existence, perhaps wishing she had understood from the start that her soul was best known by those who raised her. As an Italian American who faced this impasse, I applaud Trigiani's bona fide representation of the interaction and emotional play needed to rectify this crisis of identity. Recommended as a fast enjoyable read.

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A weak ending/ loose threads threaten this, but still good, December 8, 2003

By 

Alicia Walker "Book/movie snob" (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lucia, Lucia: A Novel (Hardcover)

At first, I was loving every page of this book. Even though I do not sew and don't care a tremendous amount about fashion, Trigiani really did a great job of pulling me into Lucia's world: the care she gave to sewing, how it made her feel, the clothing she wore and worked on.

Lucia was very sympathetic. She wanted something more than what women aspired to in 1951 and even her friends could not understand her dreams. How terrible to be one of the early feminists and not have a peer group!

The book is good until the last 1/4--which seems to be a trend lately. I suppose the last 1/4 of the book must be the most difficult to write. The book kind of rushed through the ending. Additionally, what should have been the climax for the book ended up falling a bit flat--since we the reader saw this coming--and then flailed around a bit.

I truly felt Lucia's relationship with John Talbot weakened the book somewhat. Lucia is a career woman and doesn't even want to get married, yet this whole thing with John Talbot... I don't want to give it away, but it would have made MORE sense to me if Lucia herself would merely decided to call something off herself and come to this conclusion on her own, not as part of a reaction to not getting what she wants. It just seemed that the author could have done a better job of handling that. She danced around it with a conversation between Delmarr and Lucia, but she never nailed it.

This could have been a stronger story, but it wasn't a bad story. It was light reading, enjoyable, but ultimately a bit of a let-down in the end. If you enjoy stories about this time period, pick it this up. I enjoyed this read very much until the last 1/4.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The ending ruins the story, March 5, 2005

By 

Carolyn Rampone "Carolyn D'Amico Rampone" (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lucia, Lucia: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

I received a copy of "Lucia Lucia" for Christmas and found it to be an enjoyable read. It's a story of a woman's strength to be who she feels she should be and not who she's expected to be. As other here have said, I wasn't thrilled with the ending. It felt a little disloyal to a woman who was so ahead of her time, so determined to live her own life.
I realized after reading this from cover to cover, what was really expected of me as a daughter-in-law in an Italian family. I too shunned the old Italian ways and now see why I was never really accepted.
"Lucia Lucia" hit close to home for me but I believe it is limited by cultural interest.