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Summary and Reviews of Casa Rossa by Francesca Marciano

Casa Rossa by Francesca Marciano

Casa Rossa

by Francesca Marciano
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • First Published:
  • Aug 1, 2002, 352 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Oct 2003, 352 pages
  • Genres & Themes
  • Publication Information
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

From the duplicity of Italy's role in the thirties to the dark years of terrorism in our own times, and moving from Rome and Southern Italy to New England and New York City, Casa Rossa is a brilliant weave of lives and memories: an enthralling novel.

A mesmerizing story of three generations of a twentieth-century Italian family.

Casa Rossa—a farmhouse in Puglia owned by the Strada family—is being sold. And as she packs up the house, Alina Strada pieces together the history of her family's past, and of the lives of three extraordinary Strada women.

Grandmother Renée, a beautiful Tunisian, is wife, muse, and model for Alina's painter grandfather, but she leaves him and flees to Nazi Germany. Alina's mother, Alba, marries a melancholic screenwriter and lives la dolce vita in 1950s Rome until her husband's mysterious death. Isabella, Alina's sister and once her best friend, finds herself drawn to a dangerous ideology in the 1970s; the sisters' love for one another soon shifts to a betrayal of which they can never speak. As these individual lives unfold, so does the larger one—the story of a family whose secrets collide with history.

From the duplicity of Italy's role in the thirties to the dark years of terrorism in our own times, and moving from Rome and Southern Italy to New England and New York City, Casa Rossa is a brilliant weave of lives and memories: an enthralling novel.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

New York Times Book Review
Impressive… Wise and beautifully written.

San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Breathtaking… Marciano writes with grace and knowledge.

USA Today
Remarkable… sensuous… compellingly readable. Makes you feel as if you've come back from someplace very far away.

Chicago Tribune
Marciano writes with consuming, abiding passion.

New York Times
Intensely romantic, [with] a closeness and perceptiveness worthy of Flaubert.

Times Literary Supplement (London)
A powerful first novel… Marciano evokes a spirit of place that is cathartic rudely, exultingly alive.

Library Journal - Robin Nesbitt
A good read for fans of multigenerational sagas and modern Italian history, this is recommended for most libraries.

Publishers Weekly
The intricate complications may challenge belief, but the author imperturbably weaves them together into a glamorous, romantic whole.

Kirkus Reviews
An engaging tale, simply told and with a measure of wit. A high-end soap opera to be enjoyed and forgotten. Take it to the beach.

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Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

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