{"id":12577,"date":"2024-05-21T11:00:17","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T08:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ch.jfdi.cc\/?p=12577"},"modified":"2024-05-21T11:00:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T08:00:17","slug":"book-review-the-sicilian-inheritance-by-jo-piazza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ch.jfdi.cc\/?p=12577","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

By Simon Demetriou<\/p>\n

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If a historical murder mystery set in Sicily and featuring badass women across multiple generations doing it for themselves in spite of convention and circumstance sounds good to you, then there are some good reasons to pick up Jo Piazza\u2019s latest novel. If, however, what you\u2019re looking for is a piece of beautifully crafted prose, it\u2019s likely you\u2019ll find The Sicilian Inheritance wanting. This reader\u2019s view: if you can overlook some clunky dialogue and an irritating dead great-aunt, there\u2019s enough fun to get you to the end with a smile on your face.
\nThe Sicilian Inheritance is a tale of two women called Serafina. The first, Sara, is a butcher-turned-chef-turned-restaurateur from Philadelphia. Faced with a failing marriage and the impending bankruptcy of her over-ambitious restaurant, she is sent on \u2018an adventure\u2019 by her dead great-aunt Rosie, with whom Sara had long meant to visit the ancestral home in Caltabellessa, Sicily. The trip has two goals: to learn whether a disputed land deed could be the solution to Sara\u2019s financial woes; and to discover more about the mysterious death of Rosie\u2019s mother, the second (but the original) Serafina. Needless to say, as the book switches between first-person narration by the two Serafinas, and between the 2020s and the 1910s, we quickly realise that the land and the death are interrelated, and that there is much, much more than meets the eye about both the life and death of Serafina.
\nMy main issue with the novel is that the Sara sections are noticeably patchier in quality than the Serafina sections. Sara\u2019s dialogue when interacting with her estranged husband and daughter is weak; the recollections of aunt Rosie make Rosie out to be both implausible and disgustingly obnoxious; and due to the fact that everything happens to Sara within the space of a few days, the characters and plotting are sketched out but without being evocative in the noiry way I think Piazza would have liked. Conversely, the segments dealing with Serafina, her desire to escape the shackles of conventional feminine roles through education, her relationships with the men in her life and, more importantly, with the other women liberated by their husbands\u2019 departures to the mainland or America, are both historically interesting and personally engaging.
\nUltimately, if you can block out the voice of aunt Rosie, The Sicilian Inheritance is a fun read. Caltabellessa, and Sicily itself, emerge in vivid \u2013 if sometimes caricatured \u2013 shapes, and there\u2019s enough impact in the final twist to give the mystery\u2019s resolution a satisfying jolt. I enjoyed it, even if it annoyed me a bit. And that\u2019s ok.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sicilian Inheritance is a historical murder mystery novel set in Sicily, featuring two women named Serafina across multiple generations. The story follows Sara, a butcher-turned-chef-turned-restaurateur from Philadelphia, as she embarks on a journey to her ancestral home in Sicily to solve a land deed dispute and uncover the mysterious death of her great-aunt’s mother, the original Serafina. The novel switches between first-person narration by the two Serafinas and between the 2020s and the 1910s, revealing interrelated events surrounding the land and death. The novel is praised for its historically interesting and engaging segments with Serafina, but criticized for weaker quality in the sections focusing on Sara. Ultimately, The Sicilian Inheritance is described as a fun read with a satisfying twist in the mystery’s resolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9498,10719,10709,8591,5654,3,10263,2692,4657,7017,405,3210,3343,8903,8856,250,3330,2655,10717,7905,5770,2121,185,429,183,3331,2061,1538,957,2567,10718,335,10262,4100,1100],"class_list":["post-12577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-ambitious","tag-badass-women","tag-bankruptcy","tag-book","tag-book-review","tag-cyprus","tag-cyprus-mail","tag-death","tag-dialogue","tag-dispute","tag-education","tag-escape","tag-events","tag-follow","tag-goals","tag-google","tag-google-news","tag-historical","tag-historical-murder-mystery","tag-impact","tag-inheritance","tag-land","tag-main","tag-marriage","tag-murder","tag-news","tag-relationships","tag-resolution","tag-restaurant","tag-restaurateur","tag-sicily","tag-space","tag-view","tag-visit","tag-women"],"acf":{"keyphrase":"","keywords":"","sourceimg":"","country-category":""},"yoast_head":"\nBook 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