Book Review: Brava, Valentine

Richmond Times - Dispatch

Brava, Valentine," the second novel in Adriana Trigiani's trilogy, opens in Tuscany on the wedding day of Valentine Roncalli's beloved grandmother.

On what should be a happy day, Valentine feels about as bright as a pot of red sauce forgotten and burned.

Gram has taught Valentine the art of making custom wedding shoes at the family's century-old Angelini Shoe Company in New York. Now, though, Gram will live in Italy, and that leaves Valentine feeling sorry for herself.

During the ceremony, Valentine reflects on its meaning: "I'm not the only person in this room whose life will change, but somehow I can't help feeling that I have it the worst."

That's before she learns Gram has decided that Valentine and difficult brother Alfred will run the shoe company together.

When she does, her outlook dims even more: "The moon doesn't throw much light, but it doesn't have to. I can see everything plainly: the road is dark, it's winding, and I have no idea where it leads."

OK, then. So much for her feelings about her business life. What about her love life? She has a nice little fantasy going about getting something started at the wedding with the man she met in "Very Valentine," Italian shoemaker Gianluca Vechiarelli.

That's before he shows up at the reception with a head-turning, conversation-stopping woman Valentine describes as a "mysterious goddess." Uh-oh.

But, as Valentine herself says, "It's a bad idea to close a book before 'The End,'" and she's right. Fans of Trigiani, who hails from Big Stone Gap, will find it impossible to close "Brava, Valentine" before they finish reading it. It's that good a story, told in the strong first-person voice that is a Trigiani trademark.

Valentine still rides the emotional roller coaster resulting from her tendency to assign catastrophic consequences to every downtick of life. But her world view is changing, in part because of changing circumstances, in part by choice.

When she finds an old shoe sketch clearly drawn by someone other than her grandfather, solving the puzzle takes her to Argentina. There, she finds secrets, relatives she didn't know she had and solutions to some of her problems at Angelini Shoes.

By book's end, she has a better idea of what she wants. For that, she owes some thanks to the smart people in her life, once she starts to listen to them and, more important, to believe what they tell her.

Still, Trigiani leaves a number of things unresolved for Valentine, more than enough to keep this readable trilogy bubbling along until "The End."

----

More book reviews

More book news

Copyright 2012 by Richmond Times - Dispatch