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    Lucia, Lucia: A Novel
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    Lucia, Lucia: A Novel
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    Lucia, Lucia: A Novel
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Lucia, Lucia: A Novel

    Written by Adriana Trigiani

    Narrated by Mira Sorvino

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Set in the glittering, vibrant New York City of 1950, Lucia, Lucia is the enthralling story of a passionate, determined young woman whose decision to follow her heart changes her life forever.

    Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman's department store on Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the steadfast Dante DeMartino, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized, and the Sartoris' honor is tested.

    Lucia is surrounded by richly drawn New York characters, including her best friend, the quick-witted fashion protégé Ruth Kaspian; their boss, Delmarr, B. Altman's head designer and glamorous man-about-town; her devoted brothers, Roberto, Orlando, Angelo, and Exodus, self-appointed protectors of the jewel of the family; and her doting father, Antonio. Filled with the warmth and humor that have earned Adriana Trigiani hundreds of thousands of devoted readers with her Big Stone Gap trilogy, Lucia, Lucia also bursts with a New York sensibility that shows the depth and range of this beloved author. As richly detailed as the couture garments Lucia sews, as emotional as the bonds in her big Italian family, it is the story of one woman who believes that in a world brimming with so much promise, she can-and should be able to-have it all.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 8, 2003
    ISBN9780739303658
    Unavailable
    Lucia, Lucia: A Novel
    Author

    Adriana Trigiani

    Beloved by millions of readers around the world for her "dazzling" novels (USA Today), Adriana Trigiani is “a master of palpable and visual detail” (Washington Post) and “a comedy writer with a heart of gold” (New York Times). She is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including her latest, The Good Left Undone- an instant New York Times best seller, Book of the Month pick and People’s Book of the Week. Her work is published in 38 languages around the world. An award-winning playwright, television writer/producer and filmmaker, Adriana’s screen credits include writer/director of the major motion picture of her debut novel, Big Stone Gap, the adaptation of her novel Very Valentine and director of Then Came You. Adriana grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia where she co-founded The Origin Project, an in-school writing program serving over 1,700 students in Appalachia. She is at work on her next novel for Dutton at Penguin Random House.  Follow Adriana on Facebook and Instagram @AdrianaTrigiani and on TikTok @AdrianaTrigianiAuthor or visit her website: AdrianaTrigiani.com.  Join Adriana’s Facebook LIVE show, Adriana Ink, in conversation with the world’s greatest authors- Tuesdays at 3 PM EST! For more from Adriana’s interviews, you can subscribe to her Meta “Bulletin” column, Adriana Spills the Ink: adrianatrigiani.bulletin.com/subscribe.

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    Reviews for Lucia, Lucia

    3.5/5

    401 ratings22 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I had this on my TBR, removed it, and gave it back to the booksale.....Well thanks to this challenge & Anita, I took the time to read this and I am so very glad that I did.

      What a beautiful story, well written, easy to read, believable & compelling.

      The story begins w/ a young woman, who is a neighbor of Lucia's being invited to Lucia's for tea. During tea, we get to know the story of Lucia's life. We get to know her family, about her job and friends at B.Altman's in New York as a premier seamstress, her relationships w/ the men who love her, her joys & sorrows.....

      Lucia is basically a very happy & independent young woman, who we see mature in to a happier & stronger woman. She isn't willing to back down from what she knows in her heart to be right. When she loves, she follows through despite the fact she knows deep within that she is headed for a crash landing. She supports her family but remains true to herself.....

      These quotes from the book resonate deeply with me, as are very typical of my life:

      "....But I wish for you the same things I wish for my sons: to work and live a good life. That means you will always be able to take care of yourself" --Lucia's Father

      "There isn't a man who can come along and buy me anything that I cannot earn myself." --Lucia

      "My biggest problem with the opposite sex is, that I know how to be happy on my own." --Lucia
    • 4/5
      An Italian family story set in New York in the 1950's. A lovely story to read - with some very poignant moments - not all happy.
    • 5/5
      LOVED this book!
    • 3/5
      A librarian friend of mine recommended this one to me, otherwise I might not have finished it. I HATE first person present tense as the dominant perspective for novels. If the story is really good (as in The Hunger Games series) after a while you forget that the storytelling is in such an uncomfortable voice, and just get into the story. In this book, though, the story is pretty dull until almost the end of the book. In addition the protagonist's family is traditional Italian and very sexist, so while being already unhappy with the storytelling style, I was also really annoyed at the characters and situations. I got the sense that this book was intended to take on some of the traditional sexism of the 1950's and of Old World traditional families, so some of my irritation was likely an intended outcome, but in any case I did not enjoy this book and would not recommend it. I might try other books by this author, since my friend was so thrilled with her books, but I'm not optimistic.
    • 3/5
      predictable and dense at times but a quick enjoyable read
    • 3/5
      Playwright hopeful Kit lives in New York; one of her apartment neighbors, Aunt Lu, invites her over for tea and tells her a story of young adulthood, loves and losses, and working in New York in 1951-2.My local library system has a genre study round table, and this was the title selection that everyone had to read. While I can see the appeal of a sort of old-fashioned, nice story of bygone times with a warm Italian family, details of the fashion world, sewing, and a New York neighborhood at a specific point of history, the story didn't come together for me as well as I would have liked. I didn't really care what everyone was wearing. I had a bad feeling about some of Lucia's relationship decisions from the start, and I was almost personally annoyed with her for making some of the same mistakes at 25 that I made at 18. Finally, I simply found the ending contrived. Not for me.
    • 3/5
      This was on my TBR shelf for many years, and maybe my interest in this genre waned in the meantime. It is well written and tells an interesting story of a young Italian-American woman in 1950s NYC, who rebels against her parents' plans for her life. She wants to be a fashion designer in a time period in which women usually chose marriage over careers. That part is interesting, but the character dynamics just did not keep me interested.
    • 4/5
      Kit lives by herself in an apartment, with "Aunt Lu", the landlord's "old maid" aunt upstairs. When Kit visits Lucia one day, she hears Lu's story. A story of an Italian-American girl in the 1950s, who wants more than a husband and a family... she wants a career as a seamstress. She loves her job and won't give it up, even for her finacee Dante.I really enjoyed this book! I loved that Lucia stood up for what she wanted out of life, though I had to agree with her father on one of her choices. Most of the characters were really brought to life - Lucia's family, in particular, I thought, and her friend/boss Delmarr. I really enjoyed the interaction between them all. This is the first book I've read by Trigiani, but I definitely want to read more.
    • 3/5
      Kit is a playwright living in New York. She hasn't had much luck so far, and lives in an apartment in a rather dilapidated old building. She is on nodding acquaintance with other residents, but finds herself strangely drawn to an elderly lady known to everyone as Aunt Lu.

      Kit - somewhat reluctantly - accepts an invitation to tea with Aunt Lu, and am amazing friendship begins. Lu - whose name is really Lucia - starts to talk about her life as a young Italian growing up in America in the 1950s. She works in a dress design shop, and is engaged to an upstanding young man.. but realises that she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life as a down-trodden wife. So she breaks off her engagement...

      It took me several chapters to get into this book, not helped by the fact that I kept expecting it to return to the present; this didn't in fact happen until almost the end. However, I soon realised that Lucia's story was a fascinating one in its own right, giving wonderful insights into the way a young woman in this situation would be torn between family loyalty and modern concepts of equality and following one's heart. There's some tension, some romance, lots of family ups and downs, and something of a bittersweet conclusion... which then leads back into contemporary times, and at last I understood why the book begins as it does with Kit meeting Lucia.

      By the end I was enjoying this quite a bit, although it took me a long time to reach the stage of wanting to read more than a chapter at a time. Really three and a half stars would be fairer.
    • 4/5
      What a wonderful story! A strong female lead who bows to the times and the culture of her family, without regret. An accountable and integral heroine. I love Lucia!UPDATE January 2012I first read this in December 2009, and rating is what I gave it then. My F2F book group chose this book for our January 2012 discussion, so I listened to the audio performed by Mira Sorvino to refresh my memory. Sorvino does a fine job on the audio, though she doesn't have a lot of difference in her voice for the various female characters. I really do like the way she portrays Lucia - both as a young woman and later in life. Based on the audio alone, I would probably rate it 3*** or perhaps 3.5***. Trigiani's gift for storytelling is particularly strong when she explores her Italian-American roots. The reader really gets a good sense of Greenwich Village and the New York fashion scene in the early 1950s.
    • 3/5
      a glimpse into what my life might have been were I a few years older and born in the city, I still recognized a number of Italian habits from my childhood. Easy, light read that reminded me of the Audrey Hepburn movies of my youth.
    • 5/5
      Another GREAT book by Adriani. I fell in love with all the characters. Even the ones you hate to love. I do not like to give anything away in my review so I don't get into specifics. However, I love the family dynamics and the friendships in this story. And most of all I love Lucia, her strength, devotion and "smarts".
    • 2/5

      Mostly this is a romantic tale about Lucia Sartori and her large Italian family in New York's Greenwich Village in the early 1950s. For a large chunk of the book I thought it was pretty predictable and though it was very readable it wasn't really my cup of tea. Taken as a whole though the story ended up being not quite what I thought it was going to be and I might pick up another of Adriana Trigiani's books at some point to see what else she can do. Entertaining but I liked the book more after I'd finished it than I did whilst I was reading it.

    • 4/5
      She chases the wrong good looking man, who her dad knows is a bum. he leaves her at the altar, goes to jail, and she goes on.In 1950 Greenwich Village, 25-year-old Lucia has it all: a warm and loving Italian family, a papa with a successful grocery business, an engagement ring from her childhood sweetheart, and best of all, a career she loves as a seamstress and apprentice to a talented dress designer at B. Altman's department store. When Lucia meets a rich, handsome businessman whose ambitions for a luxurious uptown lifestyle match her own, her goals for her future soar even higher. Over the next two years, however, her dreams gradually unravel. Sorvino is well-cast as the narrator of Trigiani's (Milk Glass Moon) first-person tale. She ably conveys the confidence, eagerness, and romantic yearnings of youth, as well as the guilt Lucia suffers when she disappoints her loved ones. Sorvino is also adept at providing voices for a large cast of characters: the rich Italian accent of Lucia's father, the scolding tone of her mother, the shy voice of her sister-in-law and the smooth, movie-star tones of the rich stranger Lucia pins her hopes on. This is an engaging, well-told tale about life's unexpected twists and turns, the ways that even small choices have large repercussions and the hopeful notion that sometimes, when you least expect it, you can find happiness.
    • 4/5
      I absolutely loved this story! With a few minor changes, Lucia could have been my mom. A compelling theme to me in a story is an exploration of what could have been. Lucia, Lucia is a story that touches on that theme. Lucia is the most beautiful girl in Greenwich Village and the only daughter in an Italian Catholic family. She longs to be a career woman yet she also loves the close ties of her family. The book begins with Lucia as an elderly woman, telling the story of her life to a young neighbor. What will happen to Lucia? Will she choose to marry the handsome young Italian boy next door or will she pick the suave rising business man? The end of the book left me in tears; I'm a sap for lost chances and missed opportunities. Much better than any of the Stone Gap books; I recommend this book.
    • 3/5
      Immediately, I *hated* the frame story. The opening character, Kit, is a struggling playwright living in Greenwich Village who ventures up to the apartment of the aged but elegant "Aunt Lu" and has tea while listening to her story, which is the basis of the book. My dislike of the frame only got worse when it finally reappeared (after no mention of it throughout Lucia's story) at the end of the book. The characters, including the old Lucia, are flat and there is very little to connect them to the rest of the story.Lucia's story, told in first person, at first engaged me quite a bit. I know very little about fashion, New York City, the 1950s, and the life of Italian immigrant families, yet I found myself interested in all of these. I was enthusiastic when Lucia breaks off her engagement and her role as a traditional Italian girl--choosing instead to continue her career as a seamstress working for an up-and-coming designer in the customs department of a swanky department store. I thought, hey, cool, it's about a girl who is going to be ahead of her time, who fashions herself after her own pattern rather than the rigid expectations of tradition and culture.Unfortunately, not so. Even though she sometimes flirts with the idea of striking out and becoming an independent woman throughout the rest of the book, every choice she makes--falling in love with a suave man who eventually cons her out of her heart and life savings, assuming the role of dutiful daughter when the family needs her, and submitting to the will of her traditional brothers--dashes my hopes for her character. In addition, each event and emotion is laid out in such a way as to be completely transparent--no subtlety to speak of.The book had a couple of good lines, such as my favorite spoken by Lucia's mother: "In my mind, the most dangerous people in the world are insecure women. They can do more damage in a day than an army." Overall, though, the writing was...well, plain. It was writing that got the job done, but it didn't evoke any impressive images in my mind or any real emotion for Trigiani's characters. I know I'm not emotionally invested in the characters or the writing when I find myself skimming paragraphs toward the end. And the ending, ugh. The author goes back to the ugly frame story and slaps on the most sentimental ending ever, with the final act of the book going back and essentially undoing Lucia's original admirable decision at the beginning of her story.It's not fair, perhaps, to judge a character of the 1950s because she doesn't eschew her family and society's expectations of her in a way that I expect her to, in a different era. Still, the author could have done a better job of helping me to understand her, to sympathize with her plight instead of making me skim over it.
    • 4/5
      Lucia Sartori has it all, a loving family, a budding career as a designer in B. Altman’s custom department and a wonderful fiance , but in the early 1950’s most women couldn’t have it all. Especially if she was from a traditional Italian family, then she would be expected to give up her career and become a housewife, one usually subjugated to her mother-in-law. Daughters and daughters-in-law knew how to be dutiful. This is not how Lucia envisioned the future. She made a life altering decision to defy convention. Somewhat later her head is turned by an extremely handsome man she meets by chance in the store. He is the beginning and end of her best expectations, causing her and all the Sartoris much heartbreak.This book is a wonderful period piece set in Greenwich Village with the central family, the Sartoris, a very large Italian family with four sons and one daughter, bound not only by blood but love and tradition. All the sons worked with their father, Antonio, in the Groceria , the family owned business. Lucia follows after her grandmother with her exceptional sewing abilities and eye for design. The story tells of the loyalty and duty to family that was taken for granted by Italian parents and children of the era. All of the family interactions are so spot on, described perfectly as to attitudes and social customs of the day. It is extremely easy to feel the emotional impact of all that happens to these characters. No one can write about Italian families as well as Trigiani. She grew up with such a family and all her writing seems to come straight from the heart. Everything from locations to objects of clothing, and everyone she describes is done to perfection, all the characters being well fleshed out. Her adjectives are constantly right on with just the perfect nuance. Whether it is joy or sorrow, Trigiani makes the reader feel all the emotions to their very core. As usual, there are numerous sub plots that are so interesting, the reader is constantly charmed by the scenarios. Another not- to- be-put- down- until- it- is- finished book.
    • 1/5
      Set in 1950s, New York, 25-year-old woman struggles for indepence within close-knit Italian Catholic family. I found it dull and uninspiring - writing about an issue that women have been for decades and offering no new perspectives.
    • 4/5
      Loved it. I'm not big on golden oldie fiction, but I did enjoy this. I kept flipping back to the cover whenever Lucia started describing what she wore to see if it ever matched :)
    • 1/5
      old woman remembers better times 50 years ago living in Greenwich Village until she gets left at the altar. One star is generous.
    • 2/5
      very easy read, but entertaining. a few good quotes. mostly just a cheesy chick-lit novel. probably wouldn't read again.
    • 3/5
      predictable and dense at times but a quick enjoyable read