The Swallows of Lunetto

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Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Joseph Fasano writes about The Swallows of Lunetto from Maudlin House. My life was moving on. I began a new relationship, moved, cut down on drinking (and then, later, stopped altogether). I gave myself the time and space to change. And all the while, those roots I’d put down into the darkness were doing their work. something like that is perhaps beyond words. It’s a monstrous thing. And such things are only given a shape later. In the story we tell.

I drew, of course, on personal experience, on my time in Italy, on family legends, on reading, on breathing, on life. And all the while, as those gnarled roots were stirring in the darkness, I felt the terror and the splendor of the inevitable blossoming.This research, for me, was and is deeply enjoyable. I wanted to know more, then more, then more. How did Mussolini’s fascists attempt to “educate” the youth in the years prior to the Second World War? With what kind of wood might a young Calabrese artist make her own charcoal with which to draw her images? What would she see in the waves outside her window? At exactly what depth do fishing crews net their catch in a particular season, off a particular port, in the Tyrrhenian Sea? Face coverings are required of all staff and attendees when inside the store. Masks must snugly cover nose and mouth. The Swallows of Lunetto is not a story of war, exactly. It is a story, in part, of war’s aftermath, of what happens when a young man looks up from his youth and realizes, with horror, what he has done. And it is a story of the love and forgiveness that just might be possible not only in spite of but because of the ways in which we have erred. Learning about one’s ancestors is a two-edged sword. I have personally discovered horror stories: a family massacred by Native Americans; forced conscription; generations of refugees pushing across continents, those persecuted for their faith traveling across an ocean; a runaway teenager fleeing a dictatorial father. And, most appalling of all, a beloved grandfather who spent four months in prison for attempted “ravishment” of a teenage girl. something like that is perhaps beyond words. It’s a monstrous thing. And such things are only given a shape later. In the story we tell. from the Swallows of Lunetto by Joseph Fasano

The Italian text that the author inserts is *far* too much for an English language novel. Rarely is there an intuitive link to the text for someone who doesn’t know Italian. It’s only by coincidence that I have a bunch of Duolingo under my belt, but if I hadn’t, then something as simple as ‘Gli uomini’ doesn’t add depth to the book, it distracts from it.

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In 2011, Fasano's first book, Fugue for Other Hands, won the Cider Press Review Book Award. [8] It was nominated for the Kate Tufts Poetry Award and the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award." His second collection of poems, Inheritance, was released in May 2014. In 2015, Fasano published Vincent, a book-length poem based very loosely on the 2008 killing of Tim McLean by Vince Li on a Greyhound Bus near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, on the Trans Canada Highway. [9] His fourth collection of poems, The Crossing, was released in 2018. I was thrilled to read this book before its release date as an ARC and I’m so excited for it to be introduced to the public. I wanted to write a review ASAP because I see the anticipation growing here on Goodreads! It is worth the wait, and well worth the anticipation.