Lullaby for My Sister - Italian-Canadian family drama by Nancy Barone

Ciao campagni! 
Today's guest is Nancy Barone, the author of a family drama Lullaby for My Sister set in the Italian community in Canada. Yes, you can expect some Italian stereotypes - some flattering and some critical.

Synopsis
When Valentina and Lucy Mancino’s mother died, and their father turned to alcohol to cope, Valentina quickly understood it was up to her to run the household and take care of her little sister. But Valentina was only nine years old. And when their new step-mother moved in, along with her two sons, Val also knew things were about to change for the worse.

Fifteen years later, while Lucy is flailing in life, Val is running a successful career, but she’s also hiding a terrible secret. She soon discovers that her former home is suppressing secrets of its own—many unspeakable truths are dying to be told.

My thoughts
Having almost lost my mother at the age of seven, I certainly felt very emotional reading this book. There are very few things that can scare a child more than hearing "You have to be a big, strong girl". In her novel "A Lullaby for My Sister", Nancy Barone explores the nightmarish scenario of two sisters, five and nine, losing their mother under mysterious circumstances, and their father and uncle dropping cryptic messages and not allowing them to attend the funeral. Men do not deal with bereavement well. The girl's father, whom the older daughter Val, the narrator of the novel calls by his first name Luigi, plunges into alcoholism, while dumping parenting responsibilities on his 9-year old. To keep herself from coming apart, Val corresponds with her dead mother through letters. Fast forward twenty-three years. Val is a successful career woman, determined not to let her dysfunctional childhood hold her down, but her younger sister Lucy is unconsciously resentful, immature and detached from reality. The scenario is so common, it will make you cry. In terms of the style and the content, for those of you who read family sagas and women's fiction, some of it will sound like deja vu. I mean it in a nice way. It's not that the author is aiming to massage the readers' traditional sweet spots by combining familiar elements. It's just that what she describes is so common. The characters and the situations are recognizable and relatable. A picture perfect mother in a summer dress with a string of pearls, battling her demons - and bequeathing them onto her family after her death. You will find yourself nodding and shaking your head.