Product Description

It is 1950 in glittering, vibrant New York City. Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman’s department store on Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the steadfast Dante DeMartino, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized, and the Sartoris’ honor is tested.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49029 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-29
• Released on: 2004-06-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780812967791
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In 1950 Greenwich Village, 25-year-old Lucia has it all: a warm and loving Italian family, a papa with a successful grocery business, an engagement ring from her childhood sweetheart, and best of all, a career she loves as a seamstress and apprentice to a talented dress designer at B. Altman's department store. When Lucia meets a rich, handsome businessman whose ambitions for a luxurious uptown lifestyle match her own, her goals for her future soar even higher. Over the next two years, however, her dreams gradually unravel. Sorvino is well-cast as the narrator of Trigiani's (Milk Glass Moon) first-person tale. She ably conveys the confidence, eagerness, and romantic yearnings of youth, as well as the guilt Lucia suffers when she disappoints her loved ones. Sorvino is also adept at providing voices for a large cast of characters: the rich Italian accent of Lucia's father, the scolding tone of her mother, the shy voice of her sister-in-law and the smooth, movie-star tones of the rich stranger Lucia pins her hopes on. This is an engaging, well-told tale about life's unexpected twists and turns, the ways that even small choices have large repercussions and the hopeful notion that sometimes, when you least expect it, you can find happiness.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Budding playwright Kit Zanetti is invited to tea by her elderly neighbor, and she is amazed at the apartment full of memorabilia. Her question about a beautiful full-length mink coat begins the story of "Aunt Lu's" long and interesting life. Lucia Sartori, the youngest child and only daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village in the early '50s, is engaged to marry her childhood sweetheart, Dante DiMartino. Almost on the eve of the wedding, Lucia is shocked to learn that his mother expects her to quit her job as a seamstress at B. Altman's department store to stay at home and help her future mother-in-law and to prepare for the children she is expected to have. Lucia resents having to choose between career and marriage, so she breaks the engagement. Later, she meets suave and debonair John Talbot, who sweeps her off her feet. He gives her a beautiful, full-length mink coat. Only after being jilted at the altar does Lucia learn that he is a con man. After this unfortunate event, Lucia's plans to go to California to pursue her career are thwarted when her mother becomes ill. Now she must decide between love and duty or her own happiness. Finely drawn characters move the story along with warmth and humor, relationships in Lucia's big Italian family are lovingly detailed, and there is a strong sense of place. Readers who enjoyed Trigiani's "Big Stone Gap" trilogy (Random) will find that she again tells an engaging story.
Carol Clark, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The author of the Big Stone Gap trilogy (Big Stone Gap, 2000; Big Cherry Holler, 2001; Milk Glass Moon, 2002) changes venues from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to New York City's Greenwich Village. What has not changed is Trigiani's heartfelt depiction of homespun characters whose emotions are always very close to the surface. When aspiring playwright Kit Zanetti agrees to have tea with her dignified 70-year-old neighbor, Lucia Sartori, she does so out of politeness; hours later, however, she has been treated to a vivid depiction of life on Commerce Street during the 1950s. The daughter of an Italian grocer, Lucia worked for high-end department store B. Altman's as a custom seamstress. Her love for beautiful things draws her away from her childhood sweetheart and into the arms of a suave bon vivant, who takes her to posh nightclubs and fine restaurants but eventually breaks her heart. Trigiani offers an inviting picture of Italian family life as well as a finely detailed appreciation of Old World craftsmanship, whether it be clothing or cooking. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A weak ending/ loose threads threaten this, but still good
At first, I was loving every page of this book. Even though I do not sew and don't care a tremendous amount about fashion, Trigiani really did a great job of pulling me into Lucia's world: the care she gave to sewing, how it made her feel, the clothing she wore and worked on.

Lucia was very sympathetic. She wanted something more than what women aspired to in 1951 and even her friends could not understand her dreams. How terrible to be one of the early feminists and not have a peer group!

The book is good until the last 1/4--which seems to be a trend lately. I suppose the last 1/4 of the book must be the most difficult to write. The book kind of rushed through the ending. Additionally, what should have been the climax for the book ended up falling a bit flat--since we the reader saw this coming--and then flailed around a bit.

I truly felt Lucia's relationship with John Talbot weakened the book somewhat. Lucia is a career woman and doesn't even want to get married, yet this whole thing with John Talbot... I don't want to give it away, but it would have made MORE sense to me if Lucia herself would merely decided to call something off herself and come to this conclusion on her own, not as part of a reaction to not getting what she wants. It just seemed that the author could have done a better job of handling that. She danced around it with a conversation between Delmarr and Lucia, but she never nailed it.

This could have been a stronger story, but it wasn't a bad story. It was light reading, enjoyable, but ultimately a bit of a let-down in the end. If you enjoy stories about this time period, pick it this up. I enjoyed this read very much until the last 1/4.

Lucia Lucia -- An Insight into the Italian- American Mindset
In her novel, "Lucia, Lucia",author Adriana Trigiani fashions the wonderfully likeable Lucia Sartori, living in 1950s Manhattan caught between the yearning to succeed as a proud career woman and need to follow the traditional route as wife and mother that she is most familiar with as the daughter of a close-knit Italian American family.

Lucia, indisputably "the most beautiful girl in Greenwich Village", believes she can have it all. As her candid voice weaves through the ups and downs of her family life as it tangles with a sophisticated affair that promises to transform Lucia's Americanized buoyancy into a dire Italian pessimism of operatic proportions, the reader cannot help but smile down upon this 23 year old, naïve as she is, and wish for a better conclusion to her cautionary tale.

Perhaps the outcome waxes a bit predictable, but nevertheless, Trigiani authenticates the world of fashion and post-WW2 sensibilities with a seamstress's exquisite detail that would have made Edith Head relinquish one of her Costume Design Oscars for at least a day. Trigiani excels at prolific dialogue that offers insight into the paradoxical expectations for women of that time period. Her chats between the girls at B.Altman's suggest both wisdom and trepidation with regard to the sometimes concentric and sometimes non parallel worlds of men, marriage, career and family.

Best of all is Trigiani's interpretation of the dilemma of second and third generation Italian Americans: to either assimilate into the American mindset by refuting the at times suffocating shackle of family or to entrench further into one's parent's traditional existence. In this sense, Lucia becomes every Italian American woman-- she loves her family, but recoils from the ceiling set by them---she dreams of more and possesses the abilities necessary to attract more---- she allows herself to be seduced by bright lights, romance and ambition, only to come full circle and embrace a simpler sacrificial existence, perhaps wishing she had understood from the start that her soul was best known by those who raised her. As an Italian American who faced this impasse, I applaud Trigiani's bona fide representation of the interaction and emotional play needed to rectify this crisis of identity. Recommended as a fast enjoyable read.

Adriana Swept Me Away
Adriana Trigiani has a rare gift for gently sweeping her readers into a world that is filled with rich characters, inviting us into a story that feels like family. Lucia, Lucia is a tender and sweet story that is neither overly sentimental nor unrealistically dramatic. Adriana has woven together family relationships, romance, tragedy and nostalgia in a way that is comforting in its familiarity. I was left wanting to rush out, find an older person and listen to their life story.

Readers who have enjoyed the Big Stone Gap triology will be especially thrilled with the new venue of Greenwich Village in Lucia, Lucia. Adriana's ability to vividly sketch people and places is as evident in New York as it has been in Virgina. Her wit and warmth make you feel as if you are a welcome guest whereever she takes you.

Having just turned the last page, I enthusiastically recommend Lucia, Lucia, and head back to my own book shelves to revisit Big Stone Gap.