Becoming Mariella - by Janet Constantino (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

For fans of Elena Ferrante's The Lying Life of Adults and Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation comes a contemporary coming-of-age tale about a young Italian immigrant's desperate journey to find her personal freedom.

It's unprecedented, even in the twenty-first century, for a young Sicilian woman to defy the centuries-old mandate, "Family is everything!"--but twenty-two-year-old Mariella Russo is desperate to escape Sicily. She's being relentlessly coerced into an engagement with her wealthy college sweetheart--a young man from a prominent, powerful family--by her envious and erratic mother, who hopes the match will increase her own ignominious social status. Suddenly, Mariella's lifelong home has become a claustrophobic island. In a bid for independence and an attempt to escape entrapment, she flees to San Francisco.

But Mariella's bête noire--entrapment--follows her to San Francisco, where everyone wants more from her than she wants to give. Her American roommate, Leslie, turns out to be a gay man rather than the woman she imagined; her employer/lover is pressuring her to live with him; and her neurotic mother is haunting her, wreaking havoc and embarrassment. An urgent return trip to Sicily puts Mariella to the ultimate challenge: will she submit to tradition, or choose a life she wants for herself?

Review Quotes

". . . Constantino's prose effectively carries the story . . ." --BookLife Prize

"Becoming Mariella speaks to any woman or man who has ever wanted more of a future than what was already laid out for them." --Morgan Ray, author of Sticks and Stones and Unsolicited Greetings

"Janet Constantino creates a host of unforgettable--and delightfully unpredictable--characters in this wise and lively novel full of romance, passion, true friendship, and deliciously detailed descriptions of authentic Italian cooking." --Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia

"Janet Constantino has created a character of wonderful complexity." --David Chandler, stage, screen, and voice actor

"Readers will easily relate to this enjoyable and honest depiction of the conflicting desires and expectations faced by many people in their 20s." --Kirkus Reviews

"You'll end up considering them your friends and want to invite most of them over for dinner." --Susan Salenger, author of Sidelined

About the Author

Janet Constantino is a former a competitive Latin Ballroom dancer and journalist, and has been a licensed psychotherapist since 1983. In 2015, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University, and in 2021, she won second place in the MFK Fisher Last House writing contest. A practicing Buddhist, Janet has a grown son and twin granddaughters. She and her husband of twenty-five years live in the beautiful city of Sonoma, California, with their beloved Labradoodle and tuxedo cat.