The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna: A Novel

Juliet Grames

May 2019 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

From Calabria to Connecticut: a sweeping family saga about sisterhood, secrets, Italian immigration, the American dream, and one woman's tenacious fight against her own fate

For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents—moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted.

In her rugged Italian village, Stella is considered an oddity—beautiful and smart, insolent and cold. Stella uses her peculiar toughness to protect her slower, plainer baby sister Tina from life’s harshest realities. But she also provokes the ire of her father Antonio: a man who demands subservience from women and whose greatest gift to his family is his absence.

When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and Tina must come of age side-by-side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them. Soon Stella learns that her survival is worthless without the one thing her family will deny her at any cost: her independence.

In present-day Connecticut, one family member tells this heartrending story, determined to understand the persisting rift between the now-elderly Stella and Tina. A richly told debut, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is a tale of family transgressions as ancient and twisted as the olive branch that could heal them.

“Witty and deeply felt.” —Entertainment Weekly (New and Notable)

“The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna achieves what no sweeping history lesson about American immigrants could: It brings to life a woman that time and history would have ignored.” —Washington Post

 

Ratings and reviews

Juliet Grames’ debut novel, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is a lush epic depicting the 100-year lifespan of a woman whose name portends an existence filled with extraordinary luck. In fact, Stella is very lucky- surviving the seven or eight close calls she has with death as described in the title. At the same time, she also experiences an exorbitant amount of suffering and loss along the way as well. Stella’s tale is narrated by one of her descendants, who elicits memories from her aunt who can bear witness to her life, even though this may mean that the story is distorted by time and perspective. At the onset the book moves at a luxurious pace, painstakingly describing Stella’s beginnings in a small village in Calabria prior to WWI. As it can feel in real life, time speeds up as the novel progresses into her later years. By the end, whole decades are consolidated into mere sentences. Stella’s story embraces the feminine point of view-there is little sympathy left for the male characters who are either brutes or nonentities. It is the women who unflinchingly bear the scars and emotional weight that propels the novel’s action. Yet, it is Stella’s refusal to adhere to the expectations and imposed limitations of womanhood that makes her both courageous and embattled. Stella is a fascinating character, and Grames does a wonderful job incorporating the experiences of the time period and the emigration of Italians to America. Comparisons can certainly be made to Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude in terms of tone, depth, descriptiveness and the use of magical realism. Traditional Catholic practices and faith combine with superstition to create a source of conflict and allows the author to introduce the ambiguity of direct spiritual interference. The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is a novel that introduces Juliet Grames as a promising new entrant into the realm of historical, literary fiction.

I loved it ! I was surprised and a bit disappointed, when at the end ,I realized it was fiction!