Sometimes I Dream in Italian

In her acclaimed novels Blue Italian and Pink Slip,Rita Ciresi dazzled both readers and critics with her graceful storytelling and wise, witty insight into the lives of women. Now Ciresi goes home: in a resonant, lovingly written story of two sisters, one family, and the memories of childhood that slip away--only to hold us forever.

The plastic Pietà on top of the TV. The condiment dish shaped like a Venetian gondola. The crucifix studded with seashells... Years later, Angel and Lina Lupo would debate: What really was the most hideous thing in their parents' cramped and quintessentially Catholic house? And why couldn't they just forget about being Italian and have a "normal" American childhood? As the sisters argue, memories of their shared past come flooding back: a flirtation with the butcher's cousin, a mysterious photograph of a beautiful woman they once found in their father's drawer, a church-sponsored trip to the Statue of Liberty that detoured into the dark side of human sexuality.

Angel and Lina long to flee their parents' heavy accents and dowdy clothes for the glamour of New York and Hollywood. But once they have grown from ragazze to donne--girls to women--they will look back on the time that they billed themselves as the stage sensation called Two Italian Hits! with wistfulness and sorrow. One sister is about to marry a man she met by answering a personal ad. The other is on the verge of divorce. Both have come to crossroads in their lives--as they grapple with a past that seems too present, and a future that seems too far away.

Lyrical and bittersweet, rich with nostalgia, Sometimes I Dream in Italian is a story of family and love, of the bonds we are born with and those we struggle to create. A book for anyone who has ever longed both to escape and recapture the past, who can still remember a sister spinning in a new skirt, or the roughness of a kiss delivered by an unshaven father, Sometimes I Dream in Italian is a work of artistry by a writer at the peak of her storytelling powers.

Rita Ciresi is the author of Mother Rocket, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the novels Pink Slip and Blue Italian. She lives with her husband and daughter in Florida.