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Meet a woman as tenacious as Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge and as irresistible as Andrew Sean Greer's Arthur Less: Honey Fasinga, the glamorous daughter of a notorious New Jersey mobster, is returning home at last, ready to reckon with her violent past.
As a rebellious teenager, Honey managed to escape her father's circle of influence and reinvent herself in a world of art and beauty, working for a high-end auction house in Los Angeles. Now in her twilight years, she decides to return home and unexpectedly falls in love. But in her family, nothing has changed. When her grandnephew Michael bursts into her life in what appears to be a drug-fueled frenzy, and her Lexus gets jacked, it's hard to keep minding her own business. As old cruelties begin to resurface, Honey is no longer sure what she really wants—to forgive or to avenge.
This electrifying literary breakout from PEN USA Award-winning author Victor Lodato is a masterful and deeply moving portrait of love in all its forms, of moral ambiguity, and of inspiring change—a story of female rage that asks the question: What are the limits of compassion in a world gone mad?
"Lodato has written a stunning novel that begs for readers." —Library Journal (starred review)
"By simultaneously acknowledging and denying her age, Honey stands as a rewarding example of always being open to new experiences, and her combination of vulnerability and toughness calls to mind Aunt Augusta, the senior-citizen heroine of Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt. Lodato exhibits a gift for excitement in his stimulating tale." —Publishers Weekly
"[An] entertaining, Sopranos-esque mix…this tough/tender saga of homecoming exudes warmth and brio." —Kirkus Reviews
"Honey isn't one of these frail wraiths who sip tea and shuffle in worn slippers. Honey subsists on Viognier and Valium and slips on Louboutins just to run to the grocery store…a feisty heroine readers will embrace as an octogenarian with attitude to spare." —Booklist
"Rarely in literature—rarely in our lives—do we encounter someone like Honey Fasinga: fierce, complicated, and out-of-this-world sharp both inside and out. I cried, laughed, and screamed while reading this novel. Weeks after finishing, I am still looking for Honey everywhere. Victor Lodato's Honey belongs in the halls of other legendary, unforgettable characters. This novel can rightfully be called a masterpiece." —Javier Zamora, New York Times bestselling author of Solito
"Ilaria "Honey" Fasinga is free-spirited, fashion-conscious, vain, and wounded; through her story of returning to the hometown she fled as a teenager, Lodato deftly explores such themes as the value and cost of artifice, the toxicity of keeping family secrets, and the ways in which even an elegant, independent woman must negotiate the indignities and shrinking options of old age. I'll not soon forget Lodato's extraordinary heroine or her captivating life story." —Wally Lamb, New York Times #1 Bestselling author of I'll Take You There
This information about Honey was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Michael Crouser
Victor Lodato is a playwright and the author of the novels Edgar and Lucy and Mathilda Savitch, winner of the PEN USA Award for Fiction. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts, his stories and essays regularly appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and elsewhere. His novels and plays have been translated into eighteen languages. Born and raised in New Jersey, he now lives in Oregon and Arizona.
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