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Title: Solitaria
Author: Genni Gunn
Narrator: Kathleen McInerney
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
Language: English
Release date: 01-06-12
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 1 votes
Genres: Fiction, Literary
Publisher's Summary:
When Vito Santoro's body is inadvertently unearthed by a demolition crew in Fregene, Italy, his siblings are thrown into turmoil, having been told by their sister Piera that Vito had fled to Argentina 50 years earlier after abandoning his wife and son. Piera, the self-proclaimed matriarch, locks herself in her room, refusing to speak to anyone but her Canadian nephew, David. Now scattered over three continents, the family members regroup in Italy to try to discover the truth.
Editorial Reviews:
A listener knows he or she is in for a turbulent ride when an audiobook opens with the discovery of a dead body. In Gunns novel Solitaria, longlisted for the Giller Prize, the morbid discovery unearths buried secrets of Italys Santoro family and takes listeners several decades into the past and then back to the present, with ample drama furnished along the way. Kathleen McInerney is no stranger to the art of bringing stories to life, having narrated over 90 audiobooks, many of them written by best-selling authors. When performing a fiction title, McInerney tries to "approach it like a play", getting to the bottom of characters and their motivation.
Critic Reviews:
"Gunn succeeds in making us curious; and she succeeds in making us care about the characters. Solitaria is a deeply moving, intellectually stimulating, complex and fully realized novel." (BC BookWorld)
"Gunn has a fresh and epigrammatic writing style, perhaps unsurprising in someone who has also published poetry and short fiction. Solitaria is a compelling read and the ending comes as a total shock." (The Winnipeg Review)
Members Reviews:
Solitaria
Well written, but too melodramatic for my taste. For me, the story did not ring true. I would look forward to more mature work by this author.
A fabulous literary mystery set in Italy
At an abandoned villa in Fregene, Italy, a seaside town on the Adriatic near Bari, a work crew accidentally unearths a body. Tests identified the gun-shot riddled body as that of Vito Santoro, a man presumed immigrated to Argentina decades earlier, and missing since the 1950's. The news rocks the Santoro family. As the family gathers from all corners of the world, its matriarch, Piera, locks herself in her room and refuses to speak to anyone other than her nephew, David, from Canada. She is the only one who knows the circumstances surrounding Vit's death. To David, Piera slowly begins to reveal the family secrets of the past.
With flashbacks to post-war Italy, David learns about the hard luck life of the Santoro family - the unfaithful father, a mother in the throes of depression, and of their children, each of whom struggles towards adulthood desirous of their own needs. Slowly, through Piera and David's conversation, he learns the darkest of family secrets, about love a love unrequited, and his true bloodlines.
This story captivates the reader from the very first pages. Told, with vividness and emotion, while being rich in its simplicity and ripe with emotion, this dark mystery unfolds slowly, entrancing the reader, luring them to its shocking ending. The novel explores poverty and human failure, vice and love, incest and death. It is a deeply intellectual story, moving but fulfilling.
The author, Genni Gunn, is of Italian roots, having been born in Trieste and having travelled extensively throughout Italy.
