Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani

Wow, what a great book. It really gripped me and was almost impossible to stop reading. Every time I picked it up, I got sucked right back into the action. What did I like about the book? Well, I loved the narrator. Lucia Sartori is a talented seamstress in the early '50s in New York City. She lives with her big Italian family, and she works at B. Altman with a bunch of other talented women. She isn't sure whether she wants to get married because it probably means she would have to give up her career. I loved reading about her big family. I loved reading about the fashions of that era -- how people dressed up even to go to the grocery store. I loved reading about her.

What I didn't think worked so well: the beginning and the end of the book, which are jarring to me because they are told from the perspective of Lucia's young neighbor, who is the person to whom Lucia, now in her 70s, is telling the story. But if you can ignore those parts, the rest of the book is a terrific read. (Or heck, you might even like those parts.)

Looking forward to reading more Trigiani! The joy I feel in discovering a new author that I like reminds me of a strip recently published in Unshelved, the comic for librarians (bet you didn't know we librarians have our own comic strip to read!): Seven Stages of Falling In Love with an Author.