This book. Have mercy, what a visually rich book. It was a roller coaster for me, and in more ways than one.
This isn’t a review, so I won’t describe the plot like I do for review posts. The description does a good job for those who don’t know anything about the book, and the pictures I’ve found tell the story as well.
The majestic and haunting beauty of the Italian Alps is the setting of the first meeting of Enza, a practical beauty, and Ciro, a strapping mountain boy, who meet as teenagers, despite growing up in villages just a few miles apart. At the turn of the last century, when Ciro catches the local priest in a scandal, he is banished from his village and sent to hide in America as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Little Italy. Without explanation, he leaves a bereft Enza behind. Soon, Enza’s family faces disaster and she, too, is forced to go to America with her father to secure their future.
Unbeknownst to one another, they both build fledgling lives in America, Ciro masters shoemaking and Enza takes a factory job in Hoboken until fate intervenes and reunites them. But it is too late: Ciro has volunteered to serve in World War I and Enza, determined to forge a life without him, begins her impressive career as a seamstress at the Metropolitan Opera House that will sweep her into the glamorous salons of Manhattan and into the life of the international singing sensation, Enrico Caruso.
From the stately mansions of Carnegie Hill, to the cobblestone streets of Little Italy, over the perilous cliffs of northern Italy, to the white-capped lakes of northern Minnesota, these star-crossed lovers meet and separate, until, finally, the power of their love changes both of their lives forever.
Lush and evocative, told in tantalizing detail and enriched with lovable, unforgettable characters, The Shoemaker’s Wife is a portrait of the times, the places and the people who defined the immigrant experience, claiming their portion of the American dream with ambition and resolve, cutting it to fit their needs like the finest Italian silk.
This riveting historical epic of love and family, war and loss, risk and destiny is the novel Adriana Trigiani was born to write, one inspired by her own family history and the love of tradition that has propelled her body of bestselling novels to international acclaim. Like Lucia, Lucia, The Shoemaker’s Wife defines an era with clarity and splendor, with operatic scope and a vivid cast of characters who will live on in the imaginations of readers for years to come.
I found this was a book I would read and couldn’t put down until I suddenly lost interest, and then I would take a break. I continued this start/stop reading for half of the book. Then I became invested, cared about the characters–especially Ciro, that incorrigible Italian charmer–and I was completely and utterly broadsided by events I really should have seen coming from a mile away. Those of you who read the book know what I am talking about. So, not only was the reading experience a roller coaster for me, so was the story. Semi-spoiler next paragraph.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why I was unprepared. The title should have been a huge tip-off. As were the many, many clues dropped throughout the narrative. Smelling mustard gas is never good, no matter how far down wind you stand. And I even thought that when I read about Ciro waking up in the trenches to the smell of mustard gas! I thought, huh, that’s no good. But he’s okay? Wow, I guess I didn’t know as much about mustard gas as I thought. (?!) When what I thought what was going to be the climatic ending happened long before the end of the story, I refused to believe everything would go to hell in a hand basket even though that is the rule in Plotting 101. And, yeah, the constant pain is perfectly reasonable for a strapping man in his late 20s. Making shoes is hard work! I’m just being paranoid. Adriani Trigiani wouldn’t dare. Oh, she dared! She dared alright! I knew something would happen, but I didn’t want to believe that would happen, especially since I knew the story was based on the lives of her grandparents.
Hand to Bible, I swear at one point I thought to myself please tell me this book is suddenly going to be about Catholic miracles. Nope! The only thing miraculous was that I didn’t burst into tears.
That’s how this book was for me. I laughed, I almost cried, I wanted to kill Italian boys who didn’t think with the heads on their necks except when I wanted to wrap them up in a big pink bow and nestle them in the toss pillows on my bed like a teddy bear. Damn you, Ciro.
Honestly, it wasn’t even that the book was all that amazing or exceptionally well written. It’s one of those stories where I became invested in the characters and when the inevitable happened I rushed through the ending completely ticked off. I can’t remember much of the last chapters because I felt so bereft. I’m going to have to reread it because right now I remember it ending abruptly and not making much sense.
I finished the book shortly after 1:00am Sunday morning and I immediately started reading a horribly written paranormal book about teen angels. I’m not kidding. I could see the writing on the wall and new I was going to finish the story upset and late at night, so I bought a fluff book hoping it would calm me down as a preemptive strike. I read until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, only half thinking about the angels. I kept going back to Ciro & Co. I woke up at 4:00am after dreaming about a mountain and thought about those blasted characters some more until I fell back asleep.
It’s one of those books that will stay with me for a long time.
(I’ve sourced the images below, but I have a ton more in my The Shoemaker’s Wife pinterest board.)
| one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten |
Thanks for sharing all these photos, Jules–a lovely accompaniment to the book’s settings.
I whipped through this book over the weekend. I enjoyed it, found the characters likable and the plot believable and interesting enough without being over the top. Solid vacation read. The writing didn’t thrill me, but wasn’t annoying, either. I didn’t get too attached to the characters, but I certainly found myself tearing up near the end. I’d recommend it to others, but it’s not a book I would buy or reread. It’s a nice story. The parts that will stay with me are the descriptions of food. But maybe that’s just me. ;)
See, this is how I felt about Rules of Civility. Read it in 2 days and was completely meh about it. I can’t even remember the names of the characters or most of the plot, though I know it was about that one guy who was the rich woman’s pet finding himself after reading…Walden? I think the key with books like this is to read them slowly? Maybe? No clue. Could be I was more interested because of the immigrant experience and I recognized all the food. ;)
There were a few times where I actually exclaimed aloud, “They missed each other again!” At some point in the first half, I decided the girl from the mountains probably wouldn’t even end up being the Shoemaker’s Wife after all. I figured some other character would get introduced and Enza would become the one that taught Ciro what it was to feel true love back when he was just a boy. Or she’d be the girl that should have been and the Shoemaker’s Wife would be a sad and lonely character that ended up with someone who didn’t 100% love her. Thankfully, that’s not what happened but I’m glad the writing wasn’t so transparent that it allowed me to wonder :-)
I enjoyed reading every time I picked up the book but I had trouble getting sucked into the story until about 3/4 through. Then I wished I wasn’t. That slow storytelling let me care more about the characters, so that when tragedy struck, I was actually moved. In the end, I was invested enough in all of the characters that I still find myself thinking about them – almost a month after finishing the book! I loved that the story centered around friendship, family, love and beauty. How can you go wrong with that?
Side note: I had pictured Cero’s character in my imagination as Lou Ferrigno (not the bodybuilder Lou, but how he looked when he was doing the Hulk series). After seeing your pictures, and reading above that the book was based on her grandparents, I decided to google and see if there was an actual picture of her grandfather, which I’m guess would be Ciro? Anyway, here’s what I found!
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/slate-belt/index.ssf/2012/06/roseto_native_and_bestselling.html
I was a bit off-base with my assessment but to be fair, she really did play up the descriptions of strength, height, and build.
Yes! This was my experience exactly. I would pick it up and put it down, and the slow reading meant that by the time I got into it, I was all worked up at the end. I’m glad to hear her grandparents didn’t have the tragic ending Ciro and Enza did. (GAH!) I also did some googling–I seriously could NOT rest thinking that was an exact retelling–and in their case they lived a few miles apart on the mountains and never met until they were in America, but like Ciro/Enza it was one of those meet/disappear things. I found nothing to suggest that he was exposed to mustard gas when he served, and that picture is from the 50s, so whew!
I pictured him to look a bit like my youngest brother (not in a creepy way) because he’s Italian, 6ft, and has blonde hair/green eyes–though his hair is no longer blonde as an adult.
And the relationship between the two brothers reminded me of Mikey/Nico, with Mikey being more the Eduardo character.
p.s. She looks like her grandma, huh?
You can’t deny they’re related, lol
And, yeah – after reading your brother’s description I was reminded that Ciro had blonde hair. I’d obviously given myself free rein on the imagination of Ciro’s character, lol
I’ve done that before! I can’t remember the book but the character had blonde hair and I was like, really? Not on my watch. ;)
The site you point to here says these are her Trigiani grandparents. In the acknowledgements of Shoemaker’s Wife AT says this was based on her grandparents love story, Carlo Bonicelli and Lucia Spada. I found his emigration into Ellis Island on http://www.EllisIsland.org via http://www.FamilySearch.org. Also has his WWI draft registration card on FamilySearch.org.
I love books based on family history! This was a great read. We used the photos Jules has here for our Page Turner Book Discussion group today at the library! Thanks, Jules!~ gail
Bah, I totally flunked out on this one. I had every intention of reading it, but I started way too late and was too distracted by other books to really get into it (namely, The Casual Vacancy, which I am really enjoying). I’ll have to give it another shot later. If this were a real-life book club, I would have brought brownies to compensate for having no intellectual contribution whatsoever.
The Casual Vacancy was awesome!
And too bad you couldn’t distribute some brownies… :)
I’ve heard mixed reviews on this one! Of course, most of these reviews came when it was first released, and I think the people who stormed the counters to buy it were Rowling’s diehard HP fans.
I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of this book and then, although I finished it, I just wasn’t enthralled with the last third. I felt like some of the writing was repetitive page filling (I remember thinking, ‘yes, I get it already!’) throughout the entire book.
That being said, the story of their lives in the Italian Alps area (rather than so many books that focus on southern Italy) , the immigrant experience and ‘heading west’ (rather than the mafia slant of so many Italian stories) was great.
I, like you, didn’t put together the mustard gas issue either. I thought, ‘huh, maybe it’s not that bad if you’re not directly exposed’ and the same thing about hard physical labor of being a shoemaker so I wasn’t prepared for Ciro’s ending.
I cannot help it, I just loved Ciro. Adriana Trigiani wrote a wonderful fun & lively character with him. I liked Enza, but not as much as Ciro. I can tell you, I learned a lot about opera from Enza’s storyline! I had a lot of ‘hmm, I never knew’ moments, but I never fully connected to her the same way as I did with Ciro’s character & storyline.
That was me. Once Ciro died–game over. I was so enamored with him that the story collapsed without him in it. I liked Enza, but she didn’t have the draw for me that Ciro had. The one time I really liked her was when she told Ciro to pound sand and come to her only when he wanted something serious. That impressed me because I found him so charming that had I been in the same spot I probably would have taken him any which way and twice on Sunday.
I agree!!!! I loved that part and that she stood by it! (and I probably would’ve taken him any which way and twice on Sunday, too if I’m being honest! LOL)
This is one of those books that I wish was made into a movie…while, at the same time, hoping that never happens. The descriptions were so stunning, I had such beautiful pictures running through my mind as I read, and I’d like to see if MY version would match a movie version, but at the same time, I’d be terrified that it would be one of the many instances of “the book was better than the movie”!
Jules, it’s funny you mention “The Rules of Civility” at the top of the page, because Enza and Laura reminded me so strongly of Katey Kontent- smart, capable, grounded young women who work hard, don’t get thrown when obstacles arise, and end up working their way into the spheres of the “right people”, using their skills to maximize any good opportunities which come their way.
I found this story very engaging, I think because I’m the third generation removed (on both sides of my family) from the immigrant experience- my dad’s family came from England, my mom’s family from the Ukraine. It really made me think about how difficult it would be to make a move like that- especially for people who don’t speak English, and don’t understand the local customs. Now, with the world being so connected, and with all kinds of information available at our fingertips- Travel advice! Common phrases! SoYouWantToMoveTo*Wherever*.com! – it’s easy to forget how overwhelming it would be to simply get off a boat, and find your daughter in a hospital, like Marco had to. It reminds me how brave (and, in some cases, how desperate) people were back then, to load everything onto a boat, and take their chances elsewhere.
It’s also hard for me to not get sucked into the romantic idea of immigration- you end up in a community filled with people like you, you work hard, save your money, end up with enough success to provide your children with more than you had. It’s so easy (especially if you’re as removed from the experience as I am) to forget how heavily the deck is stacked against new immigrants, and how unrelentingly difficult their lives could be. For every character like Ciro or Enza, there were 10 more who never left the tenements. But the descriptions of the lively ethnic communities that popped up all over North America are hard to beat…especially when so many of us live in communities where we don’t know our neighbours, and don’t interact in any real way with the people who live closest to us, unless there is a disaster of some sort (I am aware that’s a generalization). So, I guess I’m not longing for the immigrant experience, but I’m longing for a bustling neighbourhood where people understand me, and I understand them, because we have more in common than the street we live on…a place where you go out to walk the dog, and can pop into a friend’s house for coffee, or borrow a cup of sugar to finish your muffins. Now, that doesn’t happen- we have neighbours who just don’t answer the door, even if we can SEE THEM INSIDE…so, forget about your cup of sugar!
I was also wondering if there was going to be mention of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, or the labour strikes, based on Enza and Laura’s profession.
I will say, that I was not a fan of the last couple of chapters. It felt like story was being “tacked on”- Graduation! War! Peace! Love! Marriage! With the pacing of the rest of the book, where NOTHING happened quickly, to suddenly fly through so many events didn’t seem to match. I almost would have rather had the book end after THE EVENT, and then start a second novel, exploring everything that happened afterwards.
I am glad that I bought this book, and I will probably read it again.
Kat, that was a perfect recap. I’m with you completely. That part about community – so, so true. I have more community with people on-line than I do with the people next door. Sad, but true.
*disclaimer* I love to read, but I can’t write a review worth two cents. I enjoyed this book, but there were some slower sections that were a little frustrating. The characters have stayed with me long after the reading ended. Thanks for the pictures Jules, they are much better than my imagination (Enrico Caruso!)
I read this book as an ARC last year. I had forgotten a lot of the details, but I remember that I really enjoyed it. I loved it when I read it and I’m actually a little sad that I gave it to my aunt when she came through on a cross-country road trip…I wouldn’t mind reading parts again.
The Shoemaker’s Wife reminded me a little of Cutting for Stone (one of my absolute favorites) in that they were both loooong and slow-moving at times, but when I was reading them, I was transported to the time and place of the story. Both had rather dramatic settings that I thought about for a long time afterward.
I love the pictures you used here!
Would like to know if the Shoemaker`s Wife is translated in French yet. My sister does not read any English, but I am sure she love this book.
What would you consider a negative turning point in the story? for me it would be when Circo dies but i have heard so many different opinions.