2011 August 17

Book Review: How To Love An American Man by Kristine Gasbarre

Title: How To Love An American Man
Author: Kristine Gasbarre
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Publication Date: August 16, 2011
Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-0061997396
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir

From the Publisher:

Kristine Gasbarre made a New York career of dating driven, inaccessible men. When she realizes her love life will never result in happiness if she continues on the same path, she makes a big decision—relocating to Italy to discover her roots and find out what defines her adoring grandpa. But upon receiving the news of his sudden passing, she is lured away.

With nowhere left to go, Krissy returns to her small hometown for the first time in a decade to help care for her grandmother—a refined, private matriarch suffering from early dementia along with the loss of her husband. In her reluctant agreement to share the nearly lost love stories and transformative lessons from her rich sixty-year marriage, Krissy’s grandma becomes the one offering comfort as she coaches her granddaughter through the fear of loving. Grandma’s unapologetic femininity and secret giving spirit opens Krissy’s eyes about relationships, teaching her the single most important requisite for loving a man: first a woman has to learn the power of her own inner beauty.

My Review:

How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre is a thoughtful and honest memoir about relationships and how the author learned the most valuable lessons about them from her grandmother. Readers will learn how Gasbarre had difficulty in her relationships with men and rather than blaming others for her failures and misgivings, she turns to her recently widowed grandmother for a steady hand in life. The memoir is well-written without superfluous passages and refreshing for its honesty as Gasbarre does not make excuses but instead seeks answers, opens her mind to others, and learns to become introspective. Readers will feel close to the grandmother as she, suffering from her own very emotional loss at the death of her husband of sixty years, lends her heart, experience, and wisdom to her granddaughter. Gasbarre ultimately shows her readers how she went to help her ailing and grieving grandmother and wound up helping her in ways that could not have been foretold. Gasbarre was drawn to her grandmother in a time of need, yet she also provided her grandmother with something that was recently lost; that feeling when someone needed her. How To Love an American Man is a good choice for those looking for an uplifting memoir.

About the Author:

Kristine Gasbarre lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is a celebrity interviewer and a culture and lifestyle contributor to women’s publications. She is a graduate of John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, and Fordham University in New York City, with degrees in psychology and media studies. Her last name is pronounced the Italian way, except in her hometown, where it rhymes with “raspberry.”

To learn more about author Kristine Gasbarre please visit her website at: www.kristinegasbarre.com/

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a copy of How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Book Review: Two Friends by Alberto Moravia

Title: Two Friends
Author: Alberto Moravia
Publisher: Other Press
Publication Date: August 16, 2011
Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-1590513361
Genre: Literary Fiction

From the Publisher:

In this set of novellas, a few facts are constant. Sergio is a young intellectual, poor and proud of his new membership in the Communist Party. Maurizio is handsome, rich, successful with women, and morally ambiguous. Sergio’s young, sensual lover becomes collateral damage in the struggle between these two men. All three of these unfinished stories, found packed in a suitcase after Alberto Moravia’s death, share this narrative premise. But from there, each story unfolds in a unique way. The first patiently explores the slow unfurling of Sergio’s resentment toward Maurizio. The second reveals the calculated bargain Maurizio offers in exchange for his conversion to Sergio’s beloved Communism. And the third switches dramatically to the first person, laying bare Sergio’s conflicted soul.
Anyone interested in literature will relish the opportunity to watch Moravia at work, tinkering with his story and working at it from three unique perspectives.

My Review:

Two Friends by Alberto Moravia is a set of three beautifully written stories, or versions, of Sergio and Maurizio, unfinished works written around 1950 and only discovered in 1996, six years after Moravia’s death. Translated from Italian by Marina Harss, these three tales tell of two men of vastly differing political viewpoints who are both in love with the same woman. Harss provides detailed notes on the original pages of the manuscripts including clues used to constrain the dates of the writing. For the more inquisitive literary anthropologist, the pages also reveal insight into Moravia’s writing methods. Moravia explores three versions of the same story in this trio of drafts, each taking a different approach to illuminating the morals, politics, and friendship of these two divergent souls. Readers will be taken in by the intrigue that flows naturally from reading tales that were not yet complete and watching as Sergio develops a begrudging attitude toward his friend while his friend becomes involved with his lover and as the two negotiate a deal where Maurizio would revise his political views to be in line with Sergio’s. This masterfully crafted set of stories has so much to offer the literary fiction fanatic and I highly recommend Two Friends to readers that want to glimpse into the literary mind Moravia.

I received a complimentary ARC of Two Friends by Alberto Moravia from Other Press. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.