An Italian Wife
By Anne Hood
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Anne Hood’s encapsulation of life spanning four generations of the Rinaldi family starts out admirably.  Dreamy-minded teenaged spitfire Josephine is married off to Vincenzo, a man with some prospects, who plans to emigrate soon to America.  These initial chapters are extremely amusing, as young Josephine plans to poison her husband and protests the marriage by soaking herself to the waist in a mud puddle, ruining her gown.  He emigrates after a brief honeymoon, and we skip ahead several years, to the day when he finally sends her the money to follow him.  The story could take a hundred different turns from here: the Josephine of the first chapter could easily steal the money and go elsewhere – or perhaps she could come to love her husband?

Why no, none of these things happen! Instead Josephine is stuck at home because she neglected to learn much English and becomes a broodmare for her husband, and the victim of a lecherous local priest.  Things slowly slip downhill into a thicket of misery and Josephine’s sole joy comes in the form of a summer-long affair with a blond-haired iceman.  He’s her true love because he gives her orgasms.  No, I’m not kidding. He also conveniently dies just after she becomes pregnant, and she gives up her daughter for adoption and regrets the action for the rest of her days.  After this the narrative starts to PoV hop from character to character and misery to misery.

And I’m serious when I tell you that every single character in this novel is a walking vessel for tragic events.  From a son who becomes emotionally and physically impaired thanks to his service in World War II to a granddaughter who becomes ensnared in a miserable nest of casual sex because she cannot confront the fact that she’s a lesbian, the book becomes an almost comical parade of bad news.   By the time Josephine and her cancer-stricken long-lost daughter are denied a reunion at the eleventh hour, I had had enough.  Hood gleefully revels in the non-stop angst she rains on her character’s heads, seemingly having confused depth with pointless emotional bloodletting.

In Hood’s world, the only escape from the American dream for women is quite literally the sweet release of death, after which you get to spend eternity bonking the hot ice man who pumped and dumped you in your youth.  God bless America, indeed.

Reviewed by Lisa Fernandes

Grade: F

Book Type: Women's Fiction

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date: 22/03/17

Publication Date: 08/2015

Review Tags: mini review

Recent Comments …

  3. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier

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