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SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Brava, Valentine
[A] charming valentine to love, forgiveness, and family.
-- Publishers Weekly
Trigiani spoke to women's hearts with Big Stone Gap, and her Valentine series continues to do so. Brimming over with life, her latest will be essential reading for fans of humorous, touching family fiction. Trigiani's readers will be hard-pressed to wait a year for the final installment, Ciao, Valentine.
-- Library Journal
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Very Valentine
A Novel
From Publishers Weekly
This first-in-a-trilogy is a frilly valentine to Manhattan's picturesque West Village, starring a boisterous and charmingly contentious Italian-American family. Valentine Roncalli, adrift after a failed relationship and an aborted teaching career, becomes an apprentice to her 80-year-old grandmother, Teodora Angelini, at the tiny family shoe business. While Valentine struggles to come up with a financial plan -- and shoe design -- to bring the Old World operation into the 21st century, her brother, Alfred, is pushing Gram to retire and sell her building for $6 million. It's not all business for Valentine, of course: handsome and sophisticated Roman Falconi, owner and chef at a posh restaurant, is vying for her heart. Bestselling Trigiani channels ambition and girl-power, but is surprisingly reserved -- and retro -- when it comes to romance: "[O]ur relationship has to build slowly and beautifully in order to hold all the joy and misery that lies ahead, thinks Valentine." Still, this genteel and lush tale of soles and souls has loads of charm and will leave readers eager for the sequel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Reviews
"...Trigiani offers plenty of reasons to stick around for part two."
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Viola in Reel Life
School Library Journal
Viola's parents dumped her in the middle of nowhere. Well maybe "nowhere" isn't exactly true and perhaps "dumped" is too strong a word. As documentary filmmakers, her parents follow their stories. While they are filming in Afghanistan, they send their daughter to Prefect Academy for Young Women in South Bend, IN. Away from her home and friends in Brooklyn, Viola has resolved to be miserable. Her only comfort is in her daily IM conversations with her BFF, Andrew, and her personal video diary, "The Viola Reels." Then she meets her roommates, who are too great to be indifferent toward. Her constant video-camera-toting lands her on committees for school functions. To top it all off she meets a boy who shares her interest at a school dance. Suddenly, the ninth grader is happy, busy, and feeling at home. She even enters a film competition. Through the help and support of her friends and family, it could just be the short film of her dreams, maybe even good enough to win the competition. Viola in Reel Life is a sweet, character-driven story. Viola is very real, as are her feelings, hopes, desires, and dreams. There is not a lot of action, but the relationships portrayed in the book make it well worth reading.
-- Melyssa Malinowski, Kenwood High School, Baltimore, MD
A cold, snowy winter, a ghost mystery, kisses, cookies, roommates, a video diary, a film competition, and Viola's crack-me-up-every time observations all make this an endearing coming of age story.exceptionally fun.
-- Richie's Picks
Sarah Dessen for middle school.Trigiani deftly shows that teenage girls can be independent, have positive self-images, and be happy.
--
Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) )
Trigiani (Big Stone Gap) takes the familiar boarding school milieu and gives it some welcome nuance and a refreshingly grounded feel in her debut YA work. [She] offers a realistic look at the ever-shifting bonds of friendship and the adjustment to one's first taste of life away from home.
--
Publishers Weekly
A sweet, character-driven story. Viola is very real, as are her feelings, hopes, desires, and dreams.
-- School Library Journal
Best-selling adult author Trigiani nicely captures boarding-school bonding, adolescent female insecurities, and current teen trends. Fun, breezy, and full of subtle life lessons, this is a good follow-up or prequel to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.
-- Booklist
This book reminds each of us that a fish out of water really can find a new pond! Read it to remind yourself that your friends really do teach you something new every day.
-- Justine Magazine
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Home to Big Stone Gap
From Publishers Weekly
The delightful Blue Ridge Mountain town of Big Stone Gap, Va., once again comes to life through the voice of Ave Maria MacChesney in Trigiani's fourth entry in the series. Ave has just returned from an emotional trip to daughter Etta's wedding in Italy with her husband, Jack. As Ave learns to juggle empty-nest freedoms with the ache of loss, Jack's sudden health problems send Ave into a quiet panic. She struggles to be supportive while imagining the worst. Her fears allayed, she ends up directing the town's annual winter musical, a production of The Sound of Music that would send the Von Trapp family heading for the hills. Adding to the mix, Ave's close buddy, Iva Lou, becomes distant when a long-held secret surfaces, threatening their friendship. Thankfully, Theodore Tipton, the town "rock star," returns from New York City for a holiday visit. Memorable characters and smalltown magic (including recipes) continue to have appeal, but unwanted pregnancies, mountain strip-mining, the rearing up of old griefs and a trip to Scotland (given short shrift) have a kitchen-sink feel. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Rococo
Kirkus Reviews
Kitschy, quaintly
amusing Italian-American saga from Trigiani (Lucia, Lucia, 2003,
etc.). The endearing narrator is Batholomeo di Crespi, known as "B," a bachelor
decorator in the upscale New Jersey town of Our Lady of Fatima (or OLOF),
circa 1970. His exquisite taste in fabrics and decor have made B well
respected in OLOF; he's decorated all the important houses, from his
divorced older sister's Georgian manor to Aurelia Mandelbaum's mansion.
Aurelia's myopic daughter Capri, still living at home at age 40, has been
B's unofficial fiancee for 20 years, but this was their mothers' idea, not
theirs. B avoids the messiness of romantic relationships, preferring to
spend his time making the world elegant: "The rococo period where French
design and Italian flair came together make my heart leap for joy." At
the moment, he's got his eye trained nostalgically on the restoration
of the town's Catholic church. Once he wrests the commission away from
a fancy New York firm, B is faced with the scary task of having to turn
his vision into reality. Conveniently, he meets a fancy Park Avenue architect
and historian, Eydie Von Gunne, who specializes in churches and can recommend
expert craftsmen. But first, B soothes his artistic crisis with a trip
to England, where he buys Monica Vitti's chandelier, and then to Italy
with Capri, who decides to live a little in spite of him. B embarks on
the church restoration with the help of Brooklyn's noted fresco painter
Rufus McSherry, who urges him to be daring rather than conventional.
Resourceful B even saves the day by raising the last-minute money for
the church's final stage. Trigiani's story manages to transcend its fluffiness
by virtue of her unique andwinning protagonist, the determinedly single
B, who loves his family but resists the pressure to make one of his own.
Reams of furnishings detail and messy family histrionics.
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Cooking with My Sisters
"My mama is from
Sicily, my daddy is from Louisiana; Adriana's collection of Southern Style
Italian American recipes and stories is as familiar to me as a family
album. In both our families, life experiences are all related to and
through the food we shared. This collection fills the heart as full as
the stomach! Mangia - y'all!"
--Rachael Ray
“Cooking with My Sisters is the best Italian cookbook ever written by women from the American
south. Adriana Trigiani and her sisters had the genius to unite a Southern
sensibility with Italian cooking, and the stories of the Trigiani family
alone are worth the price of admission."
--
Pat Conroy
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Big Cherry Holler
The
New York Times
"As comforting as a mug of chamomile tea on a rainy Sunday."
People
"Delightfully quirky ... chock-full of engaging, oddball characters
and unexpected plot twists, this Gap is meant to be crossed."
SELECTED REVIEWS FO
Big Stone Gap
Publishers Weekly
A wholesome Cinderella story with a winning blend Of '70s nostalgia and
Appalachian local color, Trigiani's debut introduces a likable heroine
who's smart but obtuse, needy but rejecting, and generous with affection
but afraid of love.
Ave Maria Mulligan is the
daughter of the late pharmacist of Bit Stone Gap, Va., and an immigrant
Italian seamstress. She inherited the pharmacy when her father died, but
it's only her mother's recent death that made Ave realize that, at 35,
she's the town spinster. Not that she lacks for attention. Handsome
Theodore Tipton, the high school band and choral director, is her best
friend, and sexy bombshell Iva Lou Wade, who drives tire book mobile that
Ave eagerly awaits, is around to offer romantic advice....
Ave's emotional turmoil
takes place against a colorfully detailed tour of Big Stone Gap's history
and attractions, including its summer drama festival and its designation
as the home of Appalachian bluegrass....
What saves the narrative
from sentimentality and invests it with charm is Trigiani's witty voice,
her tart-tongued but appealing heroine and her ability to recall the
cultural details that immerse the reader in the atmosphere of her little
mining town.
Booklist
It's 1978, and 35-year-old self-appointed spinster Ave Maria Mulligan is
stuck in a rut in Big Stone Gap in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. And
that isn't just a metaphor for her life. As the town pharmacist, she is
keeper of some of the town's secrets. But as she herself puts it,
"God knows I don't get any pleasure in knowing that the town manager
performs self-colonics." Ave Maria is also the drama director and an
earnest member of the local rescue squad, but it's really she who needs
rescuing from her drab life. She spends much of her time at the bookmobile
when it comes through town, gossiping with Iva Lou, who is not your
stereotypical librarian. It is through Iva Lou that Ave Maria vicariously
experiences any sort of love life. But Ave Maria is soon presented with a
big family secret all her own that, with a little help from her, could
change her destiny. There are other things happening in Stone Gap,
including a mine disaster that prompts Ave Maria to quit the rescue squad.
But the Big Thing is that the legendary Elizabeth Taylor is about to visit
town with her then office-seeking husband, John Warner. The preparation
for the visit and the event itself form the backdrop to Ave Marie's own
drama as her secret presents her with new possibilities.
--Marlene Chamberlain
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