My Father Came from Italy

by Maria Coletta McLean

Book Overview

After 64 years, Mezzabotte Coletta, a retired truck driver for a Toronto macaroni factory, is retuning to his native Italia. In the village of Supino, said to take its name from the crossroads where... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1551923564
• ISBN13: 9781551923567
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Raincoast Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Touching and enchanting

I agree with the previous reviewer. This is decidedly NOT another Under the Tuscan Sun, which seems to have an "I'm used to being spoiled" attitude. I bought this book for my mother-in-law because her father did come from Italy (Sicily). I found it on her bookshelf this weekend and decided to read it myself. I was touched by the relationship between Maria and her father, both of whom are appreciative of the way the townspeople embrace them. Her father might have left the town 64 years ago, but you'd never know it by how he and his Canadian-born daughter/son-in-law/grand daughter are scooped up into the fabric of the life in Supino. I smiled and decided that one sentence kind of summed up the aura of the place when the neighbor, Joe, says to Maria on several occasions: "Maria, why do you worry so much?" The Italian focus on family, helping and respecting each other, and getting together over coffee to discuss the day's events made me want to retire and try it here, but wistful that it probably can't be duplicated.

The Library Journal review is full of Merda.....

This is not a glamorous, yuppie-audienced "Bella Tuscany." It is not a me-too account of Italy from an yet-another-New-World Italian's eyes.It's wonderful account of a relationship between a daughter and father, and Old and New World, and a people with its extended "family." It is written totally from the heart and sings of a place and time so unnoticed it now demands attention. Yes, my roots are from the same village, and Ms. Coletta has found a way to write that speaks for and to many of us descended from those brave immigrants who left Italy with nothing, and built something in the New World. She speaks of this town and its people as if they moved her arm and pen themselves.It is charmingly brief, a short story more than a novel, yet encapsules a soul that is indeed different. This town has its own dialect, and mannerisms different from surrounding parts of Lazio. There are enough happy and sad moments to take the readers heart and make them feel the change of emotion in one sitting, like an amusement park ride.Read it, and pass it on. If you've never been to the place where "there's nothing to do but always something to eat," then don't knock it because you're just not able to grasp it all.