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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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