Honey

March 4, 2024
In the diverting latest from Lodato (Edgar and Lucy), a “spritely” 82-year-old woman moves back to the New Jersey town where she was raised by her mob boss father. Ilaria “Honey” Fasinga has spent most of her adult life putting distance between herself and her family, first by attending Bryn Mawr as an art history major and then by working at auction houses in New York and Los Angeles. Now, in retirement, she’s fulfilled a prediction made by her late father more than 60 years earlier: “I know you come back.” Her nephew, Corrado, runs the family’s shadowy business, and while trying to make peace with him, Honey finds herself with a new set of problems—among them, finding out why her troubled grandnephew, Michael, is on the outs with his family; protecting a friendly neighbor, Joss, from her abusive boyfriend; and fending off the romantic advances of a talented and much younger painter, Nathan Flores. 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. Agent: Bill Clegg, United Agents.

March 1, 2024
At 82, Honey Fazzinga, the daughter of a Jersey mobster, has moved back home after decades in Los Angeles. Call it returning to the scene of the crime--or crimes--for Honey knows, quite literally, where all the bodies are buried, including that of the high-school classmate who raped her when she was 15. Living in the shadow of her family's past is harder than she expected as she confronts the deaths of old friends and lovers, each funeral confirming her own mortality. But 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. As old companions leave her, new ones enliven her days, like her neighbor Jocelyn, mired in an abusive relationship, and Nathan, a young painter who may admire Honey for more than her knowledge of fine art. Lodato (Edgar & Lucy, 2017) presents a feisty heroine readers will embrace as an octogenarian with attitude to spare.

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March 1, 2024
A mobster's daughter has finally returned, in her 80s, to the family's New Jersey home, and she knows where the bodies are buried--literally. Honey Fasinga, originally Ilaria Fazzinga, has spent a lifetime distancing herself from her Italian roots. To dodge expectations and bury memories of the brutalities she witnessed while living under the roof of her father, the Great Pietro--whom she loved, hated, and feared--she went to college, studied art, and spent decades living in Los Angeles, working at a prestigious auction house. But now she's back with a sense of unfinished business, reconnecting, remembering, and trying to resolve the gap between her assured adult self and her violent childhood. Lodato's new novel circles Honey ceaselessly, resurrecting people and events (some horrible) from her past while introducing new characters to challenge who she is now. Irrepressible neighbor Joss is grappling with Lee, a rough boyfriend. Gentle artist Nathan is attracted to Honey despite their half-century age difference. And what about Honey herself? Feisty, finely dressed, and fond of a drink, she is also suicidal and prone to panic attacks, an uneasy, unlikely meld of arrogance and uncertainty. As she swings between opinions and options, death visits the narrative repeatedly, and so do beatings, notably of Lee and also of Honey's grandnephew Michael, whose exploration of gender sits badly with the Fazzingas' "traditional" values, furthering Honey's sense of distaste and alienation. This nature/nurture debate is the central feature of a story that is long and loose, driven less by plot than by the tireless recording of Honey's ups and downs involving fine art, elderly indulgences, relationship choices, and a gun. This entertaining, Sopranos-esque mix doesn't entirely gel, but for all the vacillating, the book does establish one inescapable fact: Honey is family. Something of a jumble, this leisurely, tough/tender saga of homecoming exudes warmth and brio.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 1, 2024

Lodato's debut, Mathilda Savitch, won the PEN USA Award. His latest is the story of Honey Fasinga, daughter of a notorious New Jersey mobster, who returns home many years later and finds herself falling in love and having to reckon with her violent past--and deciding if she wants to forgive or avenge. Prepub Alert.

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