Alexandra Bianchi lives and works in Lunetto, a provincial village in Italy’s Calabria region, which finds itself ravaged by war in the summer of 1945. Leonardo Gemetti, a young man from Lunetto, has been missing for nearly eight years, and all his village knows of him is that he has carried out an atrocity against the Italian partisans in Mussolini’s fallen Republic of Salò. When Alexandra meets a masked figure in the streets of Lunetto, she cannot imagine what she will learn about history and her place in it. My life was moving on. I began a new relationship, moved, cut down on drinking (and then, later, stopped altogether). I gave myself the time and space to change. And all the while, those roots I’d put down into the darkness were doing their work. The Italian text that the author inserts is *far* too much for an English language novel. Rarely is there an intuitive link to the text for someone who doesn’t know Italian. It’s only by coincidence that I have a bunch of Duolingo under my belt, but if I hadn’t, then something as simple as ‘Gli uomini’ doesn’t add depth to the book, it distracts from it. And yet we never have nothing. We always have what we have tried to do. Always. Somewhere in us, our lives and our works ripen in secret.

Joseph Fasano is the author of the novels The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the “20 Best Small Press Books of 2020.” His books of poetry include The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013). His honors include the Cider Press Review Book Award, the Rattle Poetry Prize, and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, “awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year.” So much of the brutal, beautiful magic of Christina Rosso's Creole Conjure is in its intricate details and how deftly they weave themselves together into a seductively monstrous, fairytale tapestry. Each one of these stories is inextricably intertwined with its sister stories-each a single coiled snake on the head of the well-groomed Gorgon. Strands of the old-world fairy tales we know are braided with the new-world characters and landscapes. In Rosso's darkly dreamy New Orleans and lush swamplands, women and girls find themselves both freed and dammned by their own bestial appetites. You can't be certain from one moment to the next who will be devouring whom." – Lindsay Lusby, author of Catechesis: a postpastoral The trauma of war is intergenerational. The characters know that to be alive is to be broken, that there is no safety in the world. That life means living the questions, the questions that arise from our own selves.So I set out to make something else. And I did. There were months of research, plotting, scribbling, pulling the car to the side of the road on the way to the grocery to jot down a sentence, a line, an idea. And yet, once again, something was missing. I had a completed manuscript of what might otherwise have been a third novel, but I knew, in the end, I had nothing. Joseph Fasano is the author of the novels The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the "20 Best Small Press Books of 2020." His books of poetry include The Last Song of the World (BOA Editions, 2024), The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013). His honors include the Cider Press Review Book Award, the Rattle Poetry Prize, and a nomination for the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year." From Joseph Fasano, the acclaimed author of The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, comes The Swallows of Lunetto, the powerful story of a young couple’s escape from Italian fascism at the end of the Second World War. This, of course, meant research. Though sometimes in this life of mine I have failed to live voraciously, I have always read voraciously—it is a drug for me, a necessity, a love—and very often I am reading of history. The history of war, in particular, fascinates me, telling as it does the terrible story of what we can do to one another, and thereby teaching us, if we can listen, the ways to avoid catastrophe when next it holds out its hand. Harvard Book Store welcomes JOSEPH FASANO, award-winning author, songwriter, and professor at Columbia University and Manhattanville College, for a discussion of his new novel The Swallows of Lunetto. A Return to In-Person Events

Miljure, Ben. "New book offers imagined perspective of Greyhound bus killer". CTVNews Winnipeg . Retrieved 23 March 2015. He had been broken so many times, first by war and then by the wars within him, but he had prevailed. That’s all there is, to prevail. from The Swallows of Lunetto by Joseph Fasano Italy, 1945: Alexandra Bianchi lives and works in Lunetto, a provincial village in Italy's Calabria region, which finds itself ravaged by war. Leonardo Gemetti, a young man from Lunetto, has been missing for nearly eight years, and all his village knows of him is that he has carried out an atrocity against the Italian partisans in Mussolini's fallen Republic of Salò. When Alexandra meets a masked figure in the streets of Lunetto, she cannot imagine what she will learn about history and her place in it. In 2011, Fasano's first book, Fugue for Other Hands, won the Cider Press Review Book Award. [8] It was nominated for the Kate Tufts Poetry Award and the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award." His second collection of poems, Inheritance, was released in May 2014. In 2015, Fasano published Vincent, a book-length poem based very loosely on the 2008 killing of Tim McLean by Vince Li on a Greyhound Bus near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, on the Trans Canada Highway. [9] His fourth collection of poems, The Crossing, was released in 2018.http://ciderpressreview.com/contributors/joseph-fasano-ba-2011/ Cider Press Review 2011 Book Award Announcement From Joseph Fasano, the acclaimed author of The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, comes The Swallows of Lunetto, the powerful story of a young couple's escape from Italian fascism at the end of the Second World War. He had been broken so many times, first by war and then by the wars within him, but he had prevailed. That’s all there is, to prevail.

Fasano seems to be always concerned with the archetypal webs of life and the characters really highlight the importance of that in his body of work - it’s all the more exciting to feel that relationship to the characters. They feel familiar not only because Italian culture feels warm and inviting, but because their stories and wisdom are in us - in some way - too. This is different from his previous novel which was concerned with just a few characters and moments of dialogue; this book moves differently and seems a new achievement for such a poetry-oriented author. He rises to the occasion. Swallows fly in the basilica where Leonardo contemplated death; they fly in and out of Alexandra’s open bedroom windows as she and Leonardo tell their stories. They grow quiet when Alexandra gives birth. They represent hope, new life, renewal. How do we live with our choices, grow through them and beyond them? How do we love those who have committed evil? How do we live with the legacy of our ancestor’s acts?About the Beverage: Joseph recommends pairing his novel with a San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa because “it’s a refreshing (and sober) taste of Italy.”

something like that is perhaps beyond words. It’s a monstrous thing. And such things are only given a shape later. In the story we tell. from the Swallows of Lunetto by Joseph Fasano This research, for me, was and is deeply enjoyable. I wanted to know more, then more, then more. How did Mussolini’s fascists attempt to “educate” the youth in the years prior to the Second World War? With what kind of wood might a young Calabrese artist make her own charcoal with which to draw her images? What would she see in the waves outside her window? At exactly what depth do fishing crews net their catch in a particular season, off a particular port, in the Tyrrhenian Sea? Face coverings are required of all staff and attendees when inside the store. Masks must snugly cover nose and mouth. Besides that, the emphasis on dreams is too much, and the dialogue is not realistic, with many a conversation that (either flew over my head or) was just pointless (not a literal quote:) ‘how do you know?’ ‘Know what? I don’t’ ‘you don’t’ ‘I don’t think you’re supposed to know. You’re supposed to be in it.’ ‘That’s where we are?’ ‘That’s where we are.’

Author Joseph Fasano recounts sitting next to someone reading his book on a flight". 23 February 2023. I was thrilled to read this book before its release date as an ARC and I’m so excited for it to be introduced to the public. I wanted to write a review ASAP because I see the anticipation growing here on Goodreads! It is worth the wait, and well worth the anticipation. In 2013, the literary magazine Polutona released a selection of his poems in Russian translation. [17] Selected bibliography [ edit ] Disappointing. Entire plot seems implausible - over the course of a few hours a woman falls for a man accused of a war-time massacre and leaves her village with him. She knows about the accusation but doesn’t ask for details about what actually happened. And what about the reader? What are the details of the massacre? Why did it happen? We’re forced to infer. Joseph Fasano is the author of four books of poetry: The Crossing (Cider Press, 2018), Fugue for Other Hands (Cider Press, 2013), which won the 2011 Cider Press Review Book Award; Inheritance (Cider Press, 2014), which has been nominated for the James Laughlin Award; and Vincent (Cider Press, 2015). Fasano’s debut novel The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing was released in 2020 by Platypus Press to high critical acclaim.