Customer Reviews

Unto the Sons

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
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This magnificently written portrait of the extraordinary spirit of the Italian people, and the decision of some of them to leave Southern Italy, skillfully portrays the life and customs of small towns in pre war Calabria and New Jersey.

It introduces us to many fascinating and industrious people, and their struggle in the two world wars.

It also shows us to what it felt like to be an immigrant in the United States before the last war, and what it meant to see your children grow up as citizens of a country that was actively allied against your beloved homeland.

It is a superb account of the role Italian people have played in the development of this country, the richness of their culture and the expertise they have brought with them.

A definate "Must Read" for anyone interested in Italy and the dynamics of the USA.

As an Italian reader I found this book very involving and enjoyable.

It's a passionate, well written story of emigration, and it's a story about roots and identity.

In my opinion the only fault of this book is that it isn't the story of the whole family, but only of half of it.

The Talese saga depicts a world crowded with very interesting and well-portrayed male characters. It's the story of their dreams and their disappointments, of their failures and their achievements and of the risks they dared to take in the struggle for a better life in the old and in the new world throughout a century. It's a story about the troubles of a double loyalty and, to some extent, it's a journey home.

And I must say I found very interesting to look at a piece of italian history through the eyes of a second generation Italian-American.

In sharp contrast, the female characters are pale ghosts, barely sketched shadows wandering in the narrow space of an old house, of a narrow Southern Italian village, of an American store. Even Ippolita, the grand-grandmother, the only non-conventional woman of the family, remains hidden to us. And I happened to wonder whether Talese is not able to find anything really worthy of attention in these women and in their lives,portrayed as just spent in the shadow of their men (fathers, husbands, sons), or if they live in a world of their own, completely impenetrable to him. Whatever the answer, Talese seems to be aware of this imbalance: the title of the book is "Unto the Sons" and the sons are the male children.

This is a sweeping epic about an Italian family. Gay Talese has a rich family history and he tell's their story (in a way it is his story) with the voice of a novelist.

There are many characters who might appear uniteresting if we were to "meet them on the street," but Talese's ability to get under their skin, as it were, gives them individuality, personality and humanity. And this is the story of the characters: it is not contrived by the author--though, of course, he tailers their stories to fit HIS book.

This is not a romanticized tale. Sometimes it is dark, with stern, superstitious ancestors and bleak events. Yet when it was over I felt a warmth for most of the characters in it.

This is the epic of many Americans. My own ancestors had many similar experiences. My ancestors are fairly recent German and Swedish immigrants, but much of their story is the story of the Talese family. It is the story of our own individuality striving against our heritage and either coming to terms with it or rejecting it.

Gay Talese has helped my understand myself in terms of my own heritage through this excellent book.

This great book is of such a high quality that a short review by a guy like me can not begin to do it justice.It reads like an epic novel,but has so much more power when one remembers its a memoir-not a fictional tale.Talese's writing style is direct and spares the reader any wordiness and over description.Anyone interested in family,immigration or even larger themes like the whole of American life would be well served by reading this book

Recently I attended a conference on the history of Italian immigration, and Gay Talese was the guest speaker. For forty-five minutes he told the story of his journey as the son of Italian immigrants living in a small town in southern New Jersey, and the difficulties he encountered growing up. Talese is a gifted storyteller both in person and on paper, and in this book he presents his family's history going back to a relative who fought with Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law and the King of Naples in Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Russia in the early part of the nineteenth century.
It took Talese ten years to write this book and required a phenomenal amount of research, as it's packed with more details than probably are necessary. The descriptions of the difficult life his forbearers suffered in southern Italy certainly makes it obvious why so many of them left for greener pastures in America and other countries like Canada and Argentina. It certainly made me a second generation, Italian American; truly appreciate what my forbearers had to cope with and why I'll be forever grateful for their courage in leaving their homeland and seeking a better life in America.
Talese's ability to carefully relate his family's experiences to the history of modern Italy and the Italian culture make this work much more than a simple story. As he weaves his tale the reader learns how the Normans, the French, and then the Spanish dominated southern Italy, as they oppressed the Italians for hundreds of years with a feudal system. Even after Garibaldi united Italy in the middle of the nineteenth century and drove out the Spanish, poverty and oppression continued, until today when much of southern Italy remains impoverished as a result of a poor educational system and organized crime. Italy's terrible experiences in both World Wars together with the rise and fall of Mussolini are also covered.
Like many men living in southern Italy in the mid to latter part of the nineteenth century, his grandfather Gaetano leaves his wife and children and travels to America to make his fortune. He returns every few years to sire another child, and then returns to America where he's employed as a stonecutter for Dr. Mattison, a Philadelphia chemist who made a fortune selling worthless remedies. Mattison becomes known as the "Asbestos King" when he realizes the vast industrial uses for this deadly material, and markets it to the country. Here is one of several instances in the book where Talese goes astray as he not only gives the history of Mattison but also of his wives and children.
Talese is a wonderful storyteller and a true craftsman of detail exemplified in his description of his father's tribulations becoming a tailor, and in particular of how the master tailor, Mr. Cristiani, who his father was an apprentice to solves the problem caused by his father's carelessness in cutting a hole in the custom made pants of a local Mafioso two days before Easter. Needless to say his father's mistake put the entire tailor shop into a state of panic, which was successfully remedied by Mr. Cristiani's, skill in deception. His father eventually leaves Italy and begins a new life in a small Oceanside ultra-conservative Protestant community in southern New Jersey called Ocean City. Here is where Gay Talese is born and raised, but that's a story for another day as the tale ends with the young Talese raging against his father in a fit of misunderstanding.

I have read this book twice, which is a great undertaking. I have only begun to explore my Southern Italian roots, which Mr. Talese has so vividly illustrated. Growing up in New York City amongst my Calabrian and Sicilian relatives was to me quite normal. But as with many of my Italian-American friends and family, not much was discussed about the old country or our history.

It is only in my later years have I taken a long respectful look at where the beginnings took hold. I have a profound respect for my forefathers (and foremothers) who suffered greatly for thousands of years, then abandoned their beloved country to build a new world for the future generations to live in freedom.

Thanks to Mr. Talese for illustrating how the Italians survived the last century and how the family split up, finding successful lives in other countries.

I have recommended this book to many people, Italian and those who wish to understand better the Italian people apart from what is portrayed in movies and TV.

I do agree with a previous comment that there should have been more about the females of Italy, but he gave a great introduction to his male counterparts. Maybe another book, Mr. Talese, "Unto the Daughters".

I LIKE VERY MUCH THIS BOOK,WHEN YOU REED IT ,YOU FEEL HIS FAMILY LIKE YOURS¡¡WONDERFUL¡¡

This is the type of book which, within just a few pages, takes over your mind and, if you've never before been a hyper page-turner, you are now brother. A terse reading of the blurb on the the book would lull you into thinking this was simply a "saga of his family's immigration to America from Italy." It is much, much more. Yes you're party to the intimacies of the author's life growing up in New Jersey but you also learn about such diverse subjects as the history of asbestos, Italy's involvement in WWl and fine men's tailoring in the previous century, to name but a few engrossing topics. But it all works. Because Talese's mind is a fertile one and his interests bring you to many unexpected places. Think of Gay Talese as the kind of dinner companion you'd sit down with and hope, no pray, that he'd be in a real talkative mood and that the wallet would permit the wine to flow without interruption.

I was going to Italy, and was reading the Gay Talese book "Unto The Sons" about my hometown of Ambler, PA, which my book club would be reviewing a week after I returned. It was a heavy hardback version, and I wanted to take the book with me but did not want to take such a heavy book. I decided very close to my departure date to order the paperback version from Amazon, and it arrived in plenty of time for me to take it with me on my trip. The unexpected benefit of having the book with me was that it gave me a great history of Italy which helped me to appreciate my trip even more. I love sitting in the comfort of my home, and ordering a book online and having it delivered to my door in a few days. Primo, Amazon!

A must read for 1st or 2nd generation Italians who can better understand the travails of their forefathers.