Adriana Trigiani. Lucia, Lucia (2003) A very New York book, reminding me of east coast movies (it would make a good one, I think). Lucia Sartori, the only daughter of an immigrant family, tells her story to a young woman living in her apartment house. Lucia is a career woman: in the end, only her family matters more to her than work. One thing after another happens in her life. She’s jilted at the altar by John Talbot, a charming scumbag, there’s deaths and marriages, but all in all she’s had a good life. Her only regret: that when Altman’s Custom Tailoring Dept. closed, quality and craftsmanship ended there.
Well written, it draws you in. I read the book alongside several others, it wasn’t a page-turner for me. Lucia is a nice person, a little too good to be true, which can be said of all the characters, even the scumbag. Well done plausible 1950s ambience, if a little too pastel coloured. The edition I read included an interview between the author and Delmarr, Lucia’s boss, and “reading questions”, which look like they were devised by a high school teacher. It’s a riff on the love romance: the heroine doesn’t marry the handsome charming boss after all. Above average for the genre. ***
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