The Swallows of Lunetto

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And what kind of story was it? On its surface, it had absolutely nothing to do with the plots of those two abandoned manuscripts, but I sensed, and later knew for certain, that what I was doing was alchemizing the abandoned material into the form, the story, the voice it had meant to be all along. Harvard Book Store welcomes JOSEPH FASANO, award-winning author, songwriter, and professor atColumbia University and Manhattanville College, for a discussion of his new novel The Swallows of Lunetto. When the man flees, she follows him. They make a simple life together. They make a baby together. But the man cannot escape his fate. This research, for me, was and is deeply enjoyable. I wanted to know more, then more, then more. How did Mussolini’s fascists attempt to “educate” the youth in the years prior to the Second World War? With what kind of wood might a young Calabrese artist make her own charcoal with which to draw her images? What would she see in the waves outside her window? At exactly what depth do fishing crews net their catch in a particular season, off a particular port, in the Tyrrhenian Sea?

The Italian text that the author inserts is *far* too much for an English language novel. Rarely is there an intuitive link to the text for someone who doesn’t know Italian. It’s only by coincidence that I have a bunch of Duolingo under my belt, but if I hadn’t, then something as simple as ‘Gli uomini’ doesn’t add depth to the book, it distracts from it. Fasano's poems have appeared in the Yale Review, the Southern Review, FIELD, Tin House, Boston Review, Measure, Passages North, the American Literary Review, and other publications. [7]

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something like that is perhaps beyond words. It’s a monstrous thing. And such things are only given a shape later. In the story we tell. from the Swallows of Lunetto by Joseph Fasano

Harvard Book Store welcomes JOSEPH FASANO, award-winning author, songwriter, and professor at Columbia University and Manhattanville College, for a discussion of his new novel The Swallows of Lunetto. A Return to In-Person Events Magical moment' for author as he sat next to stranger on plane reading his book". 23 February 2023. Fasano seems to be always concerned with the archetypal webs of life and the characters really highlight the importance of that in his body of work - it’s all the more exciting to feel that relationship to the characters. They feel familiar not only because Italian culture feels warm and inviting, but because their stories and wisdom are in us - in some way - too. This is different from his previous novel which was concerned with just a few characters and moments of dialogue; this book moves differently and seems a new achievement for such a poetry-oriented author. He rises to the occasion.In 2011, Fasano's first book, Fugue for Other Hands, won the Cider Press Review Book Award. [8] It was nominated for the Kate Tufts Poetry Award and the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award." His second collection of poems, Inheritance, was released in May 2014. In 2015, Fasano published Vincent, a book-length poem based very loosely on the 2008 killing of Tim McLean by Vince Li on a Greyhound Bus near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, on the Trans Canada Highway. [9] His fourth collection of poems, The Crossing, was released in 2018. The novel considers ageless questions about the source of human evil and how society and individuals respond, about personal guilt and forgiveness. And it is about love that looks deep into another’s soul and, with an almost relentless insistence, points out the path to wholeness. Alexandra Bianchi lives and works in Lunetto, a provincial village in Italy’s Calabria region, which finds itself ravaged by war in the summer of 1945. Leonardo Gemetti, a young man from Lunetto, has been missing for nearly eight years, and all his village knows of him is that he has carried out an atrocity against the Italian partisans in Mussolini’s fallen Republic of Salò. When Alexandra meets a masked figure in the streets of Lunetto, she cannot imagine what she will learn about history and her place in it. Disappointing. Entire plot seems implausible - over the course of a few hours a woman falls for a man accused of a war-time massacre and leaves her village with him. She knows about the accusation but doesn’t ask for details about what actually happened. And what about the reader? What are the details of the massacre? Why did it happen? We’re forced to infer. And yet we never have nothing. We always have what we have tried to do. Always. Somewhere in us, our lives and our works ripen in secret.

Miljure, Ben. "New book offers imagined perspective of Greyhound bus killer". CTVNews Winnipeg . Retrieved 23 March 2015.

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Besides that, the emphasis on dreams is too much, and the dialogue is not realistic, with many a conversation that (either flew over my head or) was just pointless (not a literal quote:) ‘how do you know?’ ‘Know what? I don’t’ ‘you don’t’ ‘I don’t think you’re supposed to know. You’re supposed to be in it.’ ‘That’s where we are?’ ‘That’s where we are.’ Author Joseph Fasano recounts sitting next to someone reading his book on a flight". 23 February 2023. The trauma of war is intergenerational. The characters know that to be alive is to be broken, that there is no safety in the world. That life means living the questions, the questions that arise from our own selves. From Joseph Fasano, the acclaimed author of The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, comes The Swallows of Lunetto, the powerful story of a young couple’s escape from Italian fascism at the end of the Second World War. My life was moving on. I began a new relationship, moved, cut down on drinking (and then, later, stopped altogether). I gave myself the time and space to change. And all the while, those roots I’d put down into the darkness were doing their work.

In 2013, the literary magazine Polutona released a selection of his poems in Russian translation. [17] Selected bibliography [ edit ] He had been broken so many times, first by war and then by the wars within him, but he had prevailed. That’s all there is, to prevail. From Joseph Fasano, the acclaimed author of The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, comes The Swallows of Lunetto, the powerful story of a young couple's escape from Italian fascism at the end of the Second World War.Face coverings are required of all staff and attendees when inside the store. Masks must snugly cover nose and mouth. Joseph Fasano is the author of the novels The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the "20 Best Small Press Books of 2020." His books of poetry include The Last Song of the World (BOA Editions, 2024), The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013). His honors include the Cider Press Review Book Award, the Rattle Poetry Prize, and a nomination for the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year." Fasano's first novel, The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, was published in 2020 to critical acclaim. [10] [11] [12] [13] His second novel, The Swallows of Lunetto, became a viral social media sensation during his 2023 European book tour, covered by the BBC, the Evening Standard, The Independent, and other media. [14] [15] [16]