THE STAR-CROSSED SISTERS OF TOSCANA by Lori Nelson Spielman

Published by Berkley 2020

374 pages

ISBN 978-1-9848-0316-0

Rate: 2/5

Will I read more of this author: probably not

Genre: family history

Keywords: New York Little Italy, present time, Italy 1959-61, immigration, family secrets, family manipulation, coming of age, matriarch, true love, Venice, Florence, Ravello.

Italian families have many children; Emilia, 29 years old, is our hero and main story teller. Emilia is the second daughter in her family, mother: Josephina who died when she was two years old, her father, Leo has continued to work for Rosa the grandmother, who is controlling everybody with an iron fist. Emilia’s elder sister, Daria is married with children, she often needs Emilia to babysit. They all run a family bakery in Little Italy in New York where Emilia is the baker.

Two hundred years ago a great grandmother in Tuscany outside Florence, put a curse on all second born daughters to prevent them from being happy, to find love, to get married and therefore not have children. That curse has been kept alive ever since and none of second borne daughters have managed to break the curse. Rosa is first born; her sister, Poppy second born and she has been cast out of the family. Emilia had been writing letters to Polly until she was ten, but then Rosa found out and stopped it. Emilia has always thought the curse was not real, until in college her boyfriend almost died in a car accident in winter weather. She promised God to give him up if he would let him live. So, Emilia came home to help with the bakery, she has a dream to become a writer. She has stood on having her own small apartment: Emville, where she looks TV and tries to write. She is a second daughter so she has no right to expect more, in her extended family she is considered boring and a coward. Her Uncle Dolphi, Rosa and Poppy’s brother, has a barbershop in the area, he had a dream to write opera. Rosa and Polly immigrated to New York in 1961.

Polly invites Emilia and her cousin Luciana, also a second sister, to come with Poppy to Italy for a week. She promises Emilia to tell her about her mother and she promises Lucy she will break the curse.

Rosa is absolutely against it and demands Emilia stays and works in the bakery, she tries to manipulate both girls into staying by making them fear they will have not be accepted back into the family.

Emilia is persuaded to go and so is Lucy. It turns out that Polly is a great person, “who adores crazy people, crazy to explore, crazy to laugh, crazy to create, ready to risk failure and welcome surprises”.

Their journey takes them to Venice, Florence where Polly was born and to Ravello near Amalfi Coast. On the way Polly tells her story of true love, heartbreak, when his family calls him back to East Germany; but they had promised each other to meet in the church in Ravello were they held their private un-official wedding ceremony just for themselves, they should be meet on Polly’s 80th birthday which is at the end of their week of travel. Polly does not reveal this before they are well on the way.

In this short week Emilia undergoes a lifechanging development as do Lucy.

The curse has put Emilia in a prison of ideas, to believe she has no right for a full life of love and adventure; when Polly asks, her who are you and what do you want, Emilia has no answer to give. Lucy has been told all her life she must have a man if no she is worthless; so, in stead of shopping from man to the next, she also finds her way out of Rosa’s and her parents’ limiting small life.

SO, is the curse broken: you have to read it yourself.

My thoughts:

The story is somewhat exaggerated I think, of course family conflicts are among the most difficult. Here is a first-born Matriarch, Rosa, she was made to believe that only her happiness matters, everybody else had to dance to her tune, which is absolutely ridiculous. But as everything is discovered, it is too late in some ways, but not for Emilia, she is our rightful and true hero. I find Polly’s and Rico’s story nice, but very unrealistic. On both sides they decided first family before their own fate, a decision that made Polly lose her family.

I have been to Venice and Florence and Positano and enjoyed it very much, classical travelling in spite of millions of tourists for good and bad. I bought the book during the pandemic to remember and visit these lovely places through the book. However, I did not find the places described as well as I thought they could have been, quite distant and as from far away. It made me wonder if the author had visited these European must-see sites at all.

So, I put some of my photos from Venice and Ravello, from before the pandemic, from different years and trips.

On the Author: Lori Nelson Spielman born USA 1961.

My photos from VENICE from September 2017: