The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Grames, Juliet, Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Grames, Juliet
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Grames, Juliet	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Grames, Juliet	4-week checkout	Due 05-05-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Grames, Juliet	4-week checkout	In transit
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Grames, Juliet	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Grames, Juliet	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024

In this stunning debut novel, a young woman tells the story behind two elderly sisters' estrangement, unraveling family secrets stretching back a century and across the Atlantic to early 20th century ItalyFor 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.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

"What would happen if one woman told the truth about/her life? The world would split open.”⠀ submitted by jaromatorio on July 24, 2020, 11:37am Opening in rural Calabria, Italy around the turn of the 20th Century, ‘The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna‘ follows the title character and her family over the course of Stella’s more than 100-year life.⠀ ⠀
Mariastella Fortuna-born just a short time after the death of her older sister and given the dead child’s exact name- is haunted by the ghost of her sister and dogged by her family’s complex history and fraught dynamics. Stella is strong-willed and independent, especially for her time, and is made all the more so by the several (seven or eight to be exact!) near-death experiences she has throughout her life. ⠀
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Each chapter of this book describes the circumstances of one of Stella’s near misses, and in doing so, tells the beautiful, complicated story of the whole Fortuna family-the good, the bad, and the ugly. ⠀
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This book had a healthy dose of magical realism which I always love, but what really struck me about this story was the rawness of it, and the way that telling one (mostly) regular woman’s story can teach you so much, not just about her, but about her family, her culture, and the world around her.⠀
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While reading reviews of this book I stumbled on this quote from poet Muriel Rukeyser and I think it sums up Stella Fortuna’s story perfectly: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about/her life? The world would split open.”⠀
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