Tuesday, April 08, 2008

"Lambrusco" by Ellen Cooney. The Italian Indominatable Spirit during WWII

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Ellen Cooney is the granddaughter of Italian immigrants on her mother's side. Her non-Italian dad is a WWII veteran.

 

"Lambrusco", is out just this month. While interspersed with stories of Italian partisans and what it was like in Italy in WWII when bombs were raining down every day from American planes--and the place was under German occupation, the subject is not the war, but how all those people didn't lose heart, how they coped, how they interpreted the meaning of resistance in personal ways. How they held onto their spirit.

 

LAMBRUSCO

Pantheon Books

April 22, 2008

$25.00

 

A statement from author  Ellen Cooney

"Lambrusco comes from a double root: I'm the granddaughter of Italian immigrants on my mother's side, and my non-Italian dad is a World War Two veteran. As a baby boomer I grew up with a close relationship on an intellectual level to all things of the 1940s, and on a personal
level, to everything Italian. I'd known for a long time I'd one day write an Italian novel, but for some 15 years I kept putting it off, until it finally came to me to combine those two roots and see what happened. So the sources are deep.

The Italian I spoke as a kid was all lost, so I underwent intensive language study, traveled in Italy, and fell in love with Emilia-Romagna, the home of Lambrusco wine, Parmesan, the beautiful Adriatic coast, and Fellini, my all-time favorite film guy. While doing some research in a Rimini archive I began to gather stories of Italian partisans and what it was like along that coast when bombs were raining down every day from American planes--and the place was under German occupation, and things looked pretty hopeless. I was taken over by the events of the time in a powerful way, probably because with my limited language abilities, librarians and archive people gave me access to hundreds of photos, many of which no American ever saw before me. All the partisans of my book are based on real guys' photos. I was lucky that my imagination kicked in with a big cast of characters, like in an opera (or a Fellini film).

What became my subject is not the war, but how all those people didn't lose heart, how they coped, how they interpreted the meaning of resistance in personal ways. How they held onto their spirit. The whole time I was writing I was listening to Italian songs, and remembering the songs of my childhood, and remembering all those WWII films and books I watched and read with my dad. If I conveyed any sense of what the war was like, that's great, because I was often terrified and devastated like my characters. Putting in the song lyrics--and writing them--was how I coped with everything I'd learned and felt."

About the book:

The New York Times Book Review has called Ellen Cooney, "a remarkably talented author." In LAMBRUSCO (Pantheon Books/April 22,
2008/$25.00), she takes us to wartime Italy with a captivating novel of a mother searching for her son.

The year is 1943. Nazis have invaded Ital y, and American troops have landed. Aldo's restaurant in coastal Romagna, where Lucia Fantini
(wife of the late Aldo) entertained customers with her glorious opera singing, has been seized by Mussolini's Blackshirts. A new Resistance
squad of waiters and local tradesmen has been formed, led by Lucia's beloved son Beppi. When Beppi disappears after blowing up a German truck, she sets off to find him.

In her picaresque, operatic journey across a devastated Italy, Lucia is aided by a beautifully drawn cast of characters, including Annmarie
Malone, an American Army Intelligence officer who's a professional golfer back home; Tito Roncuzzi, a butcher who has taught neighborhood dogs to pee on the Fascists' boots; Etto Renzetti, a factory owner who scoffs at Dante; and Ugo Fantini, Aldo's physician cousin, who has reasons of his own for wanting to be near Lucia.

As the tale unfolds in its sensual and emotional richness, along with a number of daunting obsta cles, we are reminded that there are
life-sustaining things which even war can't destroy: friendship and humor, love and song, and the grapeLambruscothat nourishes them all.

Ellen Cooney is the author of six previous novels, and her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Glimmer Train, among other
publications. She has taught creative writing at MIT, Harvard, Boston College, and the University of Maine. The granddaughter of Italian
immigrants, she was a lifelong resident of Massachusetts, and recently moved to midcoast Maine.

"Cooney explores how war causes not just injury to the body but more importantly explains how every participant can be `injured in his
nerves, in his self, in his soul.'"  -Kirkus Reviews

"Cooney accomplishes her task of portraying, on a very personal level, the moxie and individuality of the Italian villagers as they face the
challenges of war."  -Publishers Weekly
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