Vita

This book caught my eye in a Roman bookstore because of its name. I was named Vita after my grandmother whom I have never met. It is an old name, so the Italians tell me, a name with meaning like Vittoria or Valentina. When I saw the book on display, I bought it mostly out of curiosity. My Italian is rusty and totally americanized so it took a long time to read this novel. When I finished it, I immediately tried to contact Melania Mazzucco to suggest that she have it translated to English. I was very happy to find out from a friend that the English version was now available. I want my family to read it. I think every Italian-American should read it. It was romantic and heroic and I knew that there was truth in it because of the stories handed down in my family. Everyone's history can be a novel, but to be a novel and true is rewarding it a very deep way.

I have just finshed reading this intriguing book. "Vita" is not the kind of story you read only once. This is a tale told by a descendant of immigrants who were relieved early on of their illusions that in America "the streets were paved with gold". I really can't call it a novel. The only part that is a novel are the chapters in which Mazzucco has fleshed out the bare bones of her genealogical discoveries with her stories of Vita, Diamante, and their friends and relatives. Some of the stories were apparently told to her by her father and grandfather, and at least one of them (the Piedmontese ancestor who was a dowser for water) she discovered was unfounded in fact. Vita the heroine is a vital force, appropriate to her name. She does not allow morality,or even longing for a star-crossed love to divert her from living. Yet she carries that love with her through all of her life. Diamante, the boy with whom she journeyed to America, on the other hand, is hampered by his dreams of someday marrying Vita from living any meaningful kind of life. Everything he does in America, he does in hopes of being reunited with her. Vita wants to go with him when he begins his journeys across America, but he always wants her to wait until he can provide for her according to his notions of propriety and to protect her from the harsh realities of immigrant life as a wanderer. Diamante's dream of Vita carries him through the prejudice, hardships and squalor of the mean streets and railroad gangs, that were often the lot of new immigrants. They mean nothing to him other than a means to the end of returning and marrying Vita. He lives in a sort of extended dream in which she remains forever the girl he told to wait for him. She is his only reality. When Diamante returns to Italy, his inablility to forgive Vita for going on with her life in his absence, cause him to make of the rest of his life an effort to obliterate his memories of America and her. He no longer wants or strives for anything. In his case, love ruins his life; Vita's life continues and she manages to live it on her own terms even though, she, too, lives in hope of a reunion, and really never loves anyone but Diamante. Her existence is hardly less harsh than that of Diamante, yet she makes her peace and her compromises with it and strives toward some kind of better life. Diamante's insistance on being worthy of Vita prevents him from ever truly possessing her. But then, I am not sure anyone could completely possess Vita. She is her own person. At the end of the story, I was struck by the fact that Vita is, like her name, more of a force than a person, and to Diamante, the reader, and Mazzucco, who is unable to find any trace of her in the records of the ancestral village and few traces in America, she is forever elusive. Other characters such as Geremia the wounded idealist, and Rocco, the thug, and Lena the Circassian woman who lives with Vita's father are brought to life with heartbreaking immediac

After reading this book in its original Italian, I purchased the English translation for my mother. Even though I haven't read the English translation, I can say that the original is one of the best books I've read... and, being a Comparative Literature major, I've read quite a few. Like me, I'm sure you'll find yourself immersed in the story of this novel, and become part of the seemingly real narrative lives of its characters. Vita and Diamante, the novel's protagonists, are two of the countless Italian immigrant children who are sent to New York at the turn of the 20th century in search of a better life in America. Their story is one of courage, love, betrayal, of loss and dissapointemnt, but it's a story with which all immigrants will identify on some level. Each of us can identify with the break from the past in search for something better and the many losses experienced along the way. At times Mazzucco interrupts the flow of her story by recounting her own experiences as she researched the history of her family - the subject of the novel. By doing so, she is able to create a link between her life and the life of her characters, between historical facts and the author's fictitious renditions of them and, most importantly, between past and present. VITA is the story of an amazingly courageous woman, the story of her LIFE and of the continuous struggle that is LIFE. A great story is one which forces us to look deeper into our own lives and contemplate our past experiences, and 'Vita' does just that.

This is a thrilling read, a breathtaking story told by a great novelist, scrupulously and brilliantly translated by Virginia Jewiss.

While I think the translation is a bit inelegant and at least in one spot, inadequate, even slightly confusing, the author's warm style can still be experienced. It's a page-turner, you really want to find out what happens to these kids. I read a review where the author was slighted for taking you all the way into their future with the two main characters, but I think that's an excellent way to end, anything less would disappoint, because you care what happens to these people. It's ethnically Italian, but I think anyone can relate to the immigrant experinces. a good read.