An Italian Wife by Ann Hood

I met Ann Hood back in 1989 at an American Booksellers Association Convention.  Her line was not long, but the novel she signed seemed intriguing.  I liked it, but it did not overwhelm me.  Recently, I stumbled upon The Obituary Writer published in 2013, and that gave me a whole new view of Ms. Hood.  Her latest novel, An Italian Wife, represents quite a departure from her earlier works I have read.

This explicit novel tells the story of four generations of Italian women.  It begins with Josephine, then her seven children, seven grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren.  What all these women show is the transformation in the way women view and react to the men in their lives.  It covers them through World War I, World War I, and into VietNam.

Josephine is an entirely innocent 14-year-old when her mother marries her off to a man eleven years her senior.  After a horrific wedding night, he promptly leaves for America, promising to send for her when he has established himself in the new world.  Fortunately, Josephine does not conceive a child, and nine years later, word comes she will leave for America within a few days.  Now 23, Josephine does not want to leave her family, friends, and familiar routine.

In an example of this transformation, Hood describes the experience of Francesca, Josephine’s oldest grandchild, who lost her husband at Normandy.  She writes, “Francie Partridge grew up Francesca Caserta less than a mile from Meadowbrook Plat.  As she navigated the familiar path home, her car filled with the lilacs she had gathered for her grandmother, Francie felt like she was driving a long distance, traveling to a place far away.  Once she passed the French church, where the French Canadians went to mass, she entered the Italian part of town.  Instantly, everything looked different.  Vegetable gardens replaced backyards; shrines to the Virgin Mary stood in place of barbecue grills or patio furniture; fig trees and cherry trees dotted yards instead of leafy maples and elms.  People sat on front steps and sidewalks.  Men at folding tables at the edge of the street played cards, smoked cigars, drank homemade wine.  Everyone was yelling – fighting, calling children, talking too loud.  Francie hated it here.  Hated the noise, the smells, the plastic Virgins watching her” (179).

Each generation of women has a completely different attitude toward sex.  Warning: the novel contains numerous scenes of explicit sexual encounters of all sorts.  I did not see this in The Obituary Writer, which I recently reviewed and enjoyed.  I do not recall this from her earlier work, either.  However, she shows how women have been “bought and sold” and used and abused over the years.  Until they begin to control their own bodies in the seventies.  The novel also traces radical changes in the attitude these women had toward religion. 

While some readers may be offended, Hood paints a terrific portrait of the changes women have endured, desired, and accepted over the years.  In addition, she shows how war has destroyed veterans and torn families apart.  This excellent, absorbing novel deserves 5 stars

--Chiron, 12/29/14

The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood

I met Ann Hood back in 1989 at an American Booksellers Association Convention.  Her line was not long, but the novel she signed seemed intriguing.  I spoke with her for a few minutes and she seemed charming and enthusiastic about the novel.  I really liked it, but it did not overwhelm me.  A couple of years later, she came out with another, and again, I was not overly impressed.  I stopped following her, until a friend mentioned The Obituary Writer published in 2013.  I decided to take another look, which now has led me to a second read of that first novel.

Ann Hood lives in Providence, Rhode Island. She is the author of eight novels, two memoirs, including Comfort:  A Journey Through Grief, which was a New York Times' Editors' Choice and named one of the top ten non-fiction books of 2008; and a collection of short stories, An Ornithologist's Guide to Life.  She is a regular columnist for the New York Times, her stories and essays have also appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, The Atlantic Monthly, and many other publications.  She has won two Pushcart Prizes, a Best American Spiritual Writing award, a Best Food Writing award, and The Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction.

The novel opens on the day in 1961 when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president.  Claire is a young wife and mother, and she is struggling with her loveless marriage.  She is married to Peter, who works at the Pentagon.  Claire has had an affair, and may be carrying her lover’s child.  Vivien Lowe, an obituary writer in San Francisco in 1919, searches for her lover, who disappeared in the Earthquake of 1906.  These women have a surprising connection.

The book alternates chapters between Claire and Vivien, and Ann Hood kept me entranced wondering about that connection not apparent until the final pages.

Claire seems a character out of the TV series, Mad Men.  She smokes and drinks with abandon, even when she knows she is pregnant.  Those were certainly different times.  Hood writes, “If Claire had to look back and decide why she had the affair in the first place, she would point to the missing boy.  This was in mid-June, during those first humid days when the air in Virginia hangs thick.  School was coming to an end, and from her kitchen window Claire could see the bus stop at the corner and the neighborhood children […] Their school bags dragged along the sidewalk; their catcher’s mitts drooped.  Jump ropes trailed behind a small group of girls, as if even they were too hot. // […] Claire smiled.  Her hands in the yellow rubber gloves dipped into the soapy dishwater as if on automatic.  Wash.  Rinse.  Set in the drainer to dry.  Repeat.  The kitchen smelled of the chocolate cake cooling on the sill in front of her.  And faintly of her cigarette smoke, and the onions she’d fried and added to the meatloaf.  Upstairs, Kathy napped, clutching her favorite stuffed animal, Mimi, a worn and frayed rabbit.” (13) 

Ann Hood when I met her

Vivien on the other hand, is single and writes obituaries for friends and neighbors.  Hood writes, “The obituary writer, Vivien Lowe, usually did not know her clients.  [… But] They were all very much like Mrs. Marjorie Benton, who sat across from her on the small deep purple loveseat.  It was a rainy March afternoon in the town of Napa, California, in 1919. […] The office looked like a sitting room, with its Victorian furniture salvaged from the old apartment in San Francisco, the loveseat and chairs and ornate, beaded lamps. The obituary writer lived above her office, in one large room that looked down on Napa’s main street.  […] Even though did not know it, Vivien knew that grieving people needed food and something to quench their thirst.  So she always put out a small plate of cheese and crackers, or cookies, or fruit.  She always offered her clients a drink.  Cool water, hot tea, even a glass of wine” (28-29).

An amusing chapter about midway, recounts a woman’s duty to her husband.  I remember those days, the Kennedy inauguration, stay-at-home moms were the norm, my mother washing dishes in the sink. Ann Hood, in The Obituary Writer, paints a vivid portrait of those times, and I am glad I have reconnected with her work.  5 stars

--Chiron, 6/2/14