Tempting Faith DiNapoli

Informationen zum Autor Besides being executive producer of Canada's Lifesize TV, Lisa Gabriele has worked at the CBC as a producer, writer, radio researcher, and reporter. Gabriele's work has appeared in Vice Magazine and The Washington Post , among others, and she's a frequent contributor to Nerve.com. She lives in Toronto's Little Italy. Klappentext At heart, Faith DiNapoli is a good Catholic girl. She's memorized all the prayers and hymns. She daydreams about her First Communion. She's pretty sure Jesus loves her. But she's angry. Angry with her father for leaving, her mother for never going anywhere, and her dysfunctional siblings -- just because they're around. And though she knows the Bible says the meek are blessed, Faith can't help but covet beautiful things and try to obtain them in any way possible. So Faith lies, cheats, and steals. In fact, she breaks almost every one of the Commandments, mostly by accident. At the same time, she grapples with the girl she thinks she should be, the family she's supposed to be a part of, and the imaginary life she may never live.In Tempting Faith DiNapoli, Faith does more than grow from innocent eight to headstrong eighteen. Faith struggles with her new bad habits, fends off bad boys who want more than she should give, and contemplates a future that looks worse than her mother's past and present.The DiNapolis are mismatched, broke, and dysfunctional, but they fight with and love one another with equal parts ferocity and devotion, laughter and tears. All the while, Faith prays for a happy ending. Or at least for something not too, too bad.One part Beverly Donofrio, one part Frank McCourt, Tempting Faith DiNapoli is a charming, fresh, bighearted debut. Leseprobe Chapter One These are the things I remember about the city. The crumbly, brown-bricked houses in our neighborhood were stacked so closely together, I used to pretend when I was four, they were the chipped, rotting teeth lining the mouth of an urban ogre, and the people who lived inside were busy little cavities. It was as though we all lived in the same house. If we were bad and sent to bed early, we could easily peek across the street into the Trevis' living room and finish watching the TV show with them, guessing at the dialogue. Privacy was something only rich people enjoyed. Our house, in Little Italy, shared a wall with the Rossis' next door, and our clothesline connected with the Pilettis' behind us. My mother used to say that if one of the neighbors' houses was swallowed up by hell, we would all be pulled down with them. When I was little, I didn't understand her jokes, so I would include Mr. Piletti in my prayers, whispering, "Also, God, please make Mr. Piletti stop beating his wife in the face, because Mom says he's gonna go to hell, which means that so will we." In the city, the four of us kids were always together, not just because our house was small and we had no choice, but because when we were small, we weren't given any. My mother only had one goddamn set of eyes, two hands, for chrissakes, and four bloody kids. So stick together, she'd say, don't you ever, ever let go of my hand. And don't let go of each other's, either, she'd say, or I'll kill you. There was all that traffic and those perverts and the crowds to contend with. And always a lot left for her to do before the day was out. In the city, the four of us kids were all the same people. We had the same bodies, the same moods, and the same ideas. For ten years, we had the same parents, who did and said the same things to each other and us. It was the only time in our lives when we could pretend to be like everyone else, which I came to believe was the gift of the city. In the city, it's difficult to stand out, unless you were like my mother. But her uniqueness was an accident of birth, and completely unintentional, which was true with us, too, but we just didn't r...

Product details

• Authors: Lisa Gabriele
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 24.09.2007
• EAN: 9781416578369
• ISBN: 978-1-4165-7836-9
• Dimensions: 143 mm x 220 mm x 20 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature