Reviews for Means of Transit: A Slightly Embellished Memoir

The average rating for Means of Transit: A Slightly Embellished Memoir based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-02-01 00:00:00 Linda Knabel Sitting at my Grandpa Sicilia's table in Hibbing at least once a month for Sunday dinner during my first two decades, listening to the conversation swirl around me in Italian, broken English, and fervent gesture, there were so many unanswered questions --- so many things I wanted to ask -- but in my heart of hearts I knew in so many ways that we did not speak the same language. Luckily Gaetano Talese, growing up in Atlantic City about the same time, was in much the same position. This book is the result of his research, interviews, and reflection on his own experience . It's an epic book, an amazing amalgamation of history, biography, fiction and drama which makes mince meat of the careful distinctions we make between those genres. It tells the story of a family (the Talese of Maida, a ancient herding town built into a mountain hillside of Calabria), a people (Southern Italians) and two lands (Italy and the United States) as well as four generations - the parents left behind, the original immigrant, the immigrant's son (himself an immigrant), and the second immigrant's son (American born and bred). I learned much more from this book about the historic complexity of the land from which my grandparents came than the dozens of lengthy histories I have read on the subject over the years perhaps because it is such a personal story set in a much larger context. It cleared up several mysteries: for example, the story of the "white widows" - the women, like my grandmother, left behind with the children while their husbands went off to God only knew where , sending much needed money back and returning every few years to sire a new child or two and go off again. I found it thoroughly engaging perhaps because it was as familiar to me as my own genetic structure ---- and as much of a mystery to me as that, too. I am unsure whether or not readers with roots in other times and places would find it as compelling, but I couldn't put it down and when, in the end, the town of Maida, thousands of years in the making, is bombed into oblivion in one single afternoon of Allied raids and Gay Talese's father, Joseph, in his outrage and despair, destroys the model airplanes his son has so carefully been making in his room , I was very, very sad to see it end, but I thoroughly understood the final line: "Those who love you make you cry...."

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-30 00:00:00 Josh Canter The size of this book is daunting but the story is so engaging, it's hard not to finish it. Yes, the history can bog you down but I say, power through. It's worth it. American and European history experienced through the ancestors of Gay Talese, makes it all so real and relevant. Watching the characters grapple with life and family while knowing what political and historical events await them is part of the charm and the intrigue. The reader knows about the devastating effects of asbestos, the betrayal of the WWI treaty, the alliance between Hitler and Mussolini before the characters, and yet watching them deal with these issues within the narrative of their lives, is so interesting. The ending left me with a heavy heart, but be warned--it won't make sense unless you've read the family event that it references from the beginning of the story. Wonderful book! Worth the time.