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Philadelphia Inquirer – Sunday August 5, 2007 --
Italian immigrants' tale of death and family secrets -- By Rita
Giordano -- When I first saw When the World Was Young, with its
nostalgic title and 1950s-vintage book-jacket photo, I have to admit
I was expecting one of those sentimental tributes to immigrant
family life and simpler times. At least maybe the guy can write, I
hoped. Well, Tony Romano can indeed write, and shame on me for
forgetting that business about not judging a book by its cover. When
the World Was Young, the first novel by Romano, a writer and teacher
from the Chicago area, is a multilayered, often dark and edgy saga
of one Italian American family in the mid-to-later decades of
20th-century Chicago. In ways, what this book does is set cliches on
their heads. Set largely in what many people would consider a more
innocent time - those 1950s - When the World Was Young actually
moves back and forth across the years. In its leaps forward...
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Chicago Tribune – May 19, 2007 -- Heart of the
matter -- A rich debut novel focuses on the struggles of an
Italian-American family in 1950s Chicago -- By Jessica Treadway
-- If "family is the country of the heart," as 19th Century Italian
leader Giuseppe Mazzini observed, then Tony Romano's first novel is
a vivid and eloquent map. In "When the World Was Young," Romano
tells the story of Angela Rosa and Agostino Peccatori, Italian
immigrants who struggle to raise their family in a culture foreign
to them in more ways than one—specifically, Chicago in 1957. Angela
Rosa devotes her time and energy to her husband and children, while
her husband runs the local social club and indulges in what he calls
"divertimente"—diversion—or what most Americans would refer to as
"affairs." In 1957 the Peccatoris have five children: Santo, at 18
the eldest...
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Library Journal – May 11, 2007 -- Romano,
Tony. When the World Was Young. -- The world was young in 1957 when
the Peccatoris, an Italian family in Chicago, suffer the loss of
two-year-old Benito. This death precipitates dramatic change, as
family members begin revealing secrets or creating new ones to hide.
When oldest brother Santo tries to keep his sister, Victoria, from
hanging around with local hood Eddie Milano, they spot an older
Italian woman attacking their father, Agostino. After the death of
Benito, Santo is determined to discover what precipitated the
attack, and Victoria becomes even more determined to see Eddie.
Agostino sees Benito's death as punishment for his philandering, and
wife Angela Rosa believes...
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Booklist -- April 15, 2007 -- Romano, Tony.
When the World Was Young.-- This tenderhearted novel about an
immigrant family during the 1950s features Angela Rosa and Agostino
Peccatori, who still long for the sight of the Apennine Hills
ringing their Italian hometown. With five children to raise,
however, they have no time for self-indulgence. Angela Rosa is
constantly cooking and cleaning, while Agostino puts in long hours
running the family-owned corner tavern. Their oldest son, Santo, is
longing for a girlfriend and a job that would give him some
independence, while 16-year-old Victoria, feeling suffocated by her
family's strict rules, has begun to smoke and flirt with bad-boy
Eddie Milano. But when their baby brother, Benito, succumbs to a
high fever, the entire family seems to come apart, each nurturing a
private grief with increasing...
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