Product Description

From the bestselling author of the BIG STONE GAP series, comes the explosive story of a passionate young woman whose fateful choice changes her life forever Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a fine Italian immigrant family in Greenwich Village, New York, in 1950. Fuelled by the post-war boom, in which talented girls with ambition are encouraged to follow their dreams, Lucia becomes an apprentice for a made-to-wear clothing designer at a chic department store on Fifth Avenue. Though she is sought after as a potential wife by the best Italian families, Lucia stays her course and works hard, determined to have a career. She juggles the roles of dutiful daughter and ambitious working girl perfectly. When a handsome stranger comes to the story and catches her eye, it is love at first sight for both of them. In order to win Lucia's hand, he must first win over her traditional family and make the proper offer of marriage. Their love affair takes an unexpected turn as secrets are revealed, Lucia's family honour is tested, and her own reputation becomes the centre of a sizzling scandal. Set in a time of possibility and change for women in America, in a city that celebrates its energy with style and elegance, LUCIA, LUCIA is the story of a girl who risks everything for the belief that a woman could - and should - be able to have it all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #611591 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 323 pages

Review
Kit rents a room in a house in Greenwich Village, New York. To earn a living she writes reviews of restaurants for magazines but her ambition is to write plays and, while waiting for success, she papers the wall of her rather squalid bathroom with rejection slips. Like the author Kit has an ear for a story and when one day Aunt Lu, the old lady on the top floor, invites her for tea and offers to tell the tale of her life Kit is enchanted. The story fills a book and will entertain the reader for many a long hour. It's a charming tale of Italian immigrants in America, their flair for selling, their feuds and their family loyalties. When Lucia Sartori was young she worked in the dressmaking section of the luxury department store B Altman. It was in the 1950s and Lucia was a modern girl who enjoyed everything about her work: the sewing, the colleagues and, most of all, the pay cheque which she banked every two weeks. A photograph taken in those years shows a stunningly beautiful girl in a gold lame dress and, as she tells Kit, she had many suitors. Lucia's ideas about a woman's place in the world did not quite chime with what her parents thought was right and best for her. These disagreements feed the plot but not always in a predictable way. Trigiani has a gift for creating the atmosphere of the past: the glamorous clothes copied from Dior and Balmain, the nightclubs and swish hotels, the warm atmosphere of a neighbourhood where Italian families knew each other intimately, meeting at church, in the stores and at weddings and funerals. Perhaps the most interesting aspect which Trigiani evokes is the chasm between uptown society families and these downtown boys and girls who were smart but not yet free to enter any club or profession they chose. A light novel, very entertaining and accomplished. (Kirkus UK)

More like a big, sloppy wet kiss to Greenwich Village than anything as mundane and unromantic as a novel: Trigiani's fourth (after Milk Glass Moon, 2002, etc.) starts off in extremely unpromising territory but thankfully doesn't stick with it for long. Narrator Kit is a flighty writer of universally rejected plays and an occasional journalist who lives in the Village and is given to mundane reflections on just how wonderful her neighborhood is. Fortunately, she doesn't have much of a life, so when her neighbor-a charming, gracious old lady everyone calls Aunt Lu-invites her in for some tea and ends up telling Kit the story of her life, Kit has no good reason to say no. In the early 1950s, Lucia Sartori lived with her large Italian family in the Village, where her father and brother ran the beloved Groceria food market. Lucia herself, still in her 20s and considered the neighborhood beauty, worked in the custom clothing section in the grand B.Altman's department store on Fifth Avenue and was engaged to the most promising bachelor around, Dante DeMartino. Spunky Lucia, though, breaks the engagement when she discovers that the DeMartinos expect her to leave work and live with them as a cleaning, cooking, baby-producing housewife. It isn't long before Lucia gets snapped up by John Talbot, a rakishly handsome man-about-town who's vaguely employed in the importing business (alarm bells clang in everyone's head, except for that of the normally bright Lucia). Trigiani is mostly interested in Lucia's relationships with her coworkers and family, only intermittently cutting back to her blossoming romance with John. But she knows how to deliver on basic desires: her story is filled-to-bursting with gorgeous clothes, sumptuous meals, beautiful weather, and the rhapsody of New York City. Where it runs into problems is with its humans: solidly depicted but never quite lifelike. Silly but romantic stuff, written in a state of never-ending swoon. (Kirkus Reviews)

COMPANY
‘A tender tale of being torn between family, career and love’

HEAT
‘The author of BIG STONE GAP triumphs again’

Customer Reviews

Thank you Richard & Judy!!
I saw this by chance being plugged on Richard & Judy a show I rarely watchor care to but.... THANK YOU!
This book I couldn't put down!
I read this is a record space of time & then passed it onto a friend whocouldn't put it down either!
The story is simple, but a good one.
A story of Italians in America and their changing fortunes.
I read this thinking what producer hasn't seen its potential, ok maybe notas a movie but a TV series or glossy one off?
It came alive & was utterly refreshing as she didn't resort to overtsexual liasons/ bad language , just a simple story, simply told.
Welldone!

I laughed, I cried.
I intended to read this for half an hour in the bath last night, I finished it at 2.15am after laughing and crying my way through the book in one sitting! It's incredibly captivating and you can feel the characters and the atmosphere of the era 'coming to life' out of the pages. Adriana Tigliani does a fantastic job in taking you back to the 1950's and making you feel part of a traditional Italian family, as well as being involved in the couture and glamour of the day. Highly recommend.

Enchanting
I had been struggling to read a book all the way through, for months and months. Then I picked up this novel and found it so inspiring, delighful and joyous that i would have dropped eveything to finish it. It deserves the highest praise of being an honestly simple, stylish tale of emotion and family, as well as having a great heroine who is easy to empathise with. Luci,lucia is interwoven with beautiful description and detail that could appeal to anyone. In three words, bittersweet, feminine and strong.