Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #810307 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-15
• Released on: 2005-08-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Inspired storytelling drives this fictionalized narrative, which follows the Italian author's family to 1903 Ellis Island, where 12-year-old Diamante Mazzucco and his cousin Vita, age nine, evolve into star-crossed lovers striving to fulfill their destinies. Earning their keep in the squalid boardinghouse run by Vita's father, the two (along with other relatives) are more or less confined to Prince Street in Manhattan, where they are subject to a horrifying array of abuses and privations. Deeply in love with Vita by the time he is 16 and determined to earn enough to marry her, Diamante signs on with a railroad building crew and unwittingly begins four years of involuntary servitude under conditions that Mazzucco describes in unsparing detail; this underrepresented corner of the East Coast immigrant experience feels as fresh here as it is brutal. Vita, meanwhile, survives three years in reform school and betrayal by a man who seduces her. The narrative throughout is lively, deeply affecting and complex, involving dozens of striving minor characters, some of whom turn to crime. Four-time novelist Mazzucco also interjects nonfiction chapters that relate her search for family members in Italy and the U.S., adding a resonant sleuthing element that further distinguishes this literary take on early–20th-century Italian-America and enduring love. (Sept.)
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From The New Yorker
Mazzucco's intermittently commanding and moving epic about the Italian immigrant experience tells the story of two children from a rural village in southern Italy amid the fetid slums of New York, circa 1903. Diamante, aged twelve, is the author's paternal grandfather, and Mazzucco mixes fact with fiction in an attempt to imagine the life of his nine-year-old cousin Vita, a girl "with a great mass of dark hair and deep dark eyes." Some of the more factual sections flag (such as those describing the Italian campaign in the Second World War), but in the early, imaginative parts the narrative is full of pungent fictional details, like Vita in her boarding house making artificial flowers, and Diamante loading bodies on a cart at a funeral parlor and measuring them for coffins.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist
In this long but heartfelt novel, Mazzucco tells the story of 12-year-old Diamante and 9-year-old Vita, who make the arduous journey from Italy to Ellis Island in 1903; their exhilarating, terrifying trip will be the source of a lifelong bond. They make their way to a squalid boardinghouse owned by Vita's gruff, irritable father, where they room with more than a dozen other impoverished immigrants. Vita cooks and cleans all day, while Diamante works long hours at odd jobs, making just enough to pay for his food. When the two increasingly turn to each other for comfort, Vita's father harshly intervenes, and Diamante leaves for Ohio, where he spends years engaged in backbreaking work. Vita, meanwhile, feisty and reckless, opens a restaurant and makes a fortune but longs for the unique connection she shared with her first love. Mazzucco won Italy's Strega Prize for this lavishly detailed novel, which also incorporates nonfiction chapters about her family history. She brings home the isolation and deprivation of the early immigrant experience in a highly accessible and inspirational story for historical fiction fans. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

VITA is the story of a woman's LIFE... and of the continuous struggle that is LIFE
After reading this book in its original Italian, I purchased the English translation for my mother. Even though I haven't read the English translation, I can say that the original is one of the best books I've read... and, being a Comparative Literature major, I've read quite a few.

Like me, I'm sure you'll find yourself immersed in the story of this novel, and become part of the seemingly real narrative lives of its characters. Vita and Diamante, the novel's protagonists, are two of the countless Italian immigrant children who are sent to New York at the turn of the 20th century in search of a better life in America. Their story is one of courage, love, betrayal, of loss and dissapointemnt, but it's a story with which all immigrants will identify on some level. Each of us can identify with the break from the past in search for something better and the many losses experienced along the way.

At times Mazzucco interrupts the flow of her story by recounting her own experiences as she researched the history of her family - the subject of the novel. By doing so, she is able to create a link between her life and the life of her characters, between historical facts and the author's fictitious renditions of them and, most importantly, between past and present.

VITA is the story of an amazingly courageous woman, the story of her LIFE and of the continuous struggle that is LIFE. A great story is one which forces us to look deeper into our own lives and contemplate our past experiences, and 'Vita' does just that.

Vita - worth the effort
While I think the translation is a bit inelegant and at least in one spot, inadequate, even slightly confusing, the author's warm style can still be experienced. It's a page-turner, you really want to find out what happens to these kids. I read a review where the author was slighted for taking you all the way into their future with the two main characters, but I think that's an excellent way to end, anything less would disappoint, because you care what happens to these people. It's ethnically Italian, but I think anyone can relate to the immigrant experinces. a good read.

Beautiful story of life and love
In Italian, Vita means Life. This is a wonderful story about the trials and triumphs of life. You will fall in love with Vita and Diamante and find yourself truly caring about what happens to this pair.