How to Hold a Woman

I received my book in good condition in a timely manner. The book was a good read, I recommend it. Thank you Phyllis Robinson

I have never reviewed a book before but I felt so strongly about this one that I was compelled to write my first. This is really a gem and I feel I have gotten in on the bottom floor of an amazing writer. The stories are spare and beautiful and the "novel in short stories" concept is perfect for this very tortured exploration of what it feels like to be inside a family that is falling apart. I could not put this book down and recommend it to all readers. It contains nuggets of truth like poetry does, or the best fiction, which this is.

Alan, Audrey and their three children are intact, if not a little too busy, as they juggle the pressure of career and family. And then, their daughter is abducted and goes missing. With burning hope and worn expectancy, the family tries to carry on, but the loss rends marital mask and veil exposing the terrible and tragic machinery of grief. With perfectly locked rhythms, Lombardo's narrative accounts and recounts for the proximate cause of loss to illustrate the quietly complex opacity of most of our decisions. Hard words go unspoken while Alan and Audrey quiver down the end-days of marriage, and the future is but a doomed faint forestalling. Feverish, and increasingly fractured, the marriage moves along greased grooves as they come to terms with what has happened to them. In the end, the reader leaves with a new appreciation for the fragility of family, and how life's sharp corners can overwhelm and crush it.

I couldn't put this book down and finished it in just over 24 hours. Lombardo brilliantly uses seemingly small details to paint a picture of a family life. I have never read anything quite like it. I can't wait for his next book!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book for the way Billy Lombardo describes this evolving tale of sorrow, love and discovery. Emotions and feelings which befall this family are so real you seem to be physically present throughout every event and might well remember similar struggles in your life. it also added a very local aspect of knowing the real streets, restaurants, places even to subtly describing a local town as having the money to afford home and traveling little league uniforms. Bringing in the author's home turf added extra visualizations to areas close to home. But it was not familiar names and places that made this short novel such a 'page-turner', it is the author's choice of words to describe the emotions the characters are expressing and lacking such a painful tragedy, might even be every married couple's journey. If you haven't read his first book, 'The logic of a Rose' get both these books and you will thoroughly enjoy yourself with delightful stories and to some more familiar scenes and life experiences. Based upon his first two hits I know he will continue to be an author who uses his heart to write and maybe a little of his Italian roots to bring us into his 'family'! Well Done!