This thought-provoking literary fiction book follows the lives of a dysfunctional Italian family—especially Donna Greco and her brother Vincent—from 1970 to 2012. The book leaves you with this question: When I look back over my life, what pictures will I see?
Donna, the narrator of the story, looks up to big brother Vincent. Vincent is an artist and musician. He is a dreamer who wants to go to art school, but his father won’t hear of it. At one point, he even tells Vincent to leave, so Vincent does so. How he left made me giggle: he moved all of his bedroom furniture onto the front porch and lived there for a few weeks.
Donna meets her future husband and moves on with her life, getting married and having children, becoming a grandmother. Her husband is a lawyer, but he has a drinking problem he refuses to acknowledge, and this drives a wedge between them.
Donna appears to be more concerned about Vincent’s life than she is her own though. He is still working a dead-end job that won’t take him anywhere, so she keeps encouraging him to go back to college, find a better job, etc. instead of realizing that Vincent is happy just as he is.
Grace Mattioli is a gifted writer. She pulls you into the lives of this dysfunctional family, making you wonder what is going to happen with them.
Reading is one of my favorite pastimes, but literary fiction is not a genre I read often. It is so true to life that it often bums me out. Parts of The Bird that Sang in Color did depress me. And there were times I thought that things couldn’t get any worse. But looking at the book as a whole, it really wasn’t a downer. The book ended on a high point, leaving Donna looking back at her life and the pictures she sees comprising it. So am I glad I read it? Yes, I am.
I was sent a copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review. If you’re a fan of literary fiction, you will love this book. If you would like your own copy of this book to read, I’ve provided an Amazon link for you below.
Amazon Link: The Bird that Sang in Color
Recommended Articles:
Literary Fiction: What is it Really? – Guest Post by Christopher Meeks
Writing Literary Fiction – Guest Post by Christopher Meeks
Favorite Sentences:
Some of his paintings were abstract, my favorite being one that looked like a kaleidoscope with no beginning and no end and colors that bounced off the canvas like a beautiful neon sign sparkling against a black sky.
The moon shimmered on Vincent’s face while his eyes were joyfully transfixed on the bats flying through the sky like frenzied kites.
I could still see the beach-worn copy of Watership Down on his dashboard. He never read it, but it remained on his dashboard like a fixture, and when he lost it, he went out and got a replacement copy that he also never read.
I became really good at ignoring all the unpleasantries on the bus like the toddler who was screeching in the front and the guy sitting next to me, who didn’t know about the existence of deodorant.
New Words Learned:
pennywhistle – an inexpensive fipple flute. A fipple is a grooved plug in the end of a whistle, flute, or organ pipe.
rillettes – a pâté made of minced pork or other light meat, seasoned and combined with fat
smelts – any of a family (Osmeridae) of small bony fishes that closely resemble the trouts in general structure, live along coasts and ascend rivers to spawn or are landlocked, and have delicate oily flesh with a distinctive odor and taste
About the Author:
Grace Mattioli is the author of Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees (2012) and Discovery of an Eagle (2014), which both feature the lovable, quirky Greco family. Additionally, she has published a small collection of short stories entitled The Brightness Index (2016). Her third novel featuring the Greco family, The Bird that Sang in Color, was be released in January 17, 2021. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and her most awesome cats. She has worked as a librarian for several years and has been writing creatively since she was a child.
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