Lucia, Lucia

Rating:
Summary: This would make a Great made for TV movie!
Review: Lucia is an italian girl who is living in her house with her parents ( who are from Italy) and her brothers. They own a grocery store not far from their house where the family works.
Lucia is a seamstress that works for B. Altman & Co. when that store was exclusive and before "ready to wear" items were made. She worked in the department that custom made clothes for women with alot of money. She also helped design bridal gowns.

She is engaged to be married to an Italian boy who owns the town bakery. But she wants to call off the engagement because she doesn't want to be a housewife she still wants to keep her job in Altman's. Her parents are upset. Her oldest brother gets a girl pregnant and they marry in the back of the church, which causes alot of shame on the family. It isn't until the baby is born that both families of the newlyweds reunite and make "peace" with each other. The baby dies, and tragedy stikes
again the the household.

Lucia finds a georgous man who she falls in love with and leaves her at the altar. It takes her a while get back on with her life and there are other tragedies in the family to keep her mind off the wedding "that wasn't". As time passes she finds outs that the man she was in love with was a con man and he gambled all of her money away instead of buying their home, and he was placed in jail.

Lucia goes to visit him, many many years later and hear his confession to her as to why he left her on the altar. He was a coward and wanted things he couldn't have.

In the end, this book was entertaining and a very easy enjoyable read, and I recommend it to anyone.



Rating:
Summary: bella story
Review: Lucia, Lucia has everything I love to read about: fashion, art, travel, food, religion, love, and most importantly family. I loved it when the family visited Italy, I felt like I was there with Lucia and Rosemary walking the streets of Rome. Lucia's family means everything to her, especially her Papa. Lucia believes she is cursed in love, but getting married is not her dream like it is for her friends. She wants more! Work is important to her. She loves her job at B. Altman's working with her best friends Ruth and Delmarr. I loved that this took place in the early 50's because it's untraditional to what I know about the 50's. I'm crazy about this book and will keep it because there are some recipes in it I can't wait to try like tartufo (snowballs). I would recommend this to sisters, friends, mothers, and mother-in-laws.

Rating:
Summary: Hats off to Strength!
Review: Strength you ask? Yes! Lucia Lucia is a compelling book depicting the strengths of self, independence, womanhood, family, friendship, loyalties, love and honor, betrayal and sorrow.

Though another reader found this book to be predictable, I did not! I kept hoping for a fairy tail ending ... not that the book did not have a fairy tail ending ... just one that is diferent than what one would classify as a fairy tail.

I listened to it as an audio, and was enchanted from the very beginning ... and lo and behold, the enchantment lasted the entire book!

Rating:
Summary: Loved it! Loved it!
Review: This is a charming story about an Italian-American woman and her family set during the 1950's. Lucia Sartori narrates her tale in flashback fashion to a young woman who lives in her apartment building in present day Greenwich Village. And what a tale it is! Lucia was a working woman most of her life but remained unmarried and lived at home, first as the only daughter helping to take care of four older brothers, and then later as caretaker for her widowed mother. Along the way, Lucia has her share of male love interests but her love of family and career always come first in her life.

If you enjoy reading stories about traditional Italian-American families you will love this book! Being Italian-American myself I thought Ms. Trigiani did an excellent job in truthfully portraying how it feels to live in a culture/household where the opinions and needs of the females usually always take a backseat to those of the males. But the novel is also filled with a great deal of respect for the importance of religion and traditions in most Italian families. Not to mention there are some mouth-watering recipes included for some authentic Italian foods and the book also provides a colorful look inside the fashion world of the fifties