The Letter Carrier
by

The Letter Carrier: A Novel

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 31 seconds

In the bestselling novel that has captivated readers in Italy, The Letter Carrier by Francesca Giannone depicts a small town in southern Italy that reflects the experiences of many others. It portrays the lives of women and men—husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters—as they strive to navigate the world while remaining true to their hearts. The Letter Carrier explores the universal theme of connection and examines the consequences that arise when those connections occur at the wrong time.

Salento, Italy, June 1934: A coach stops in the main square of Lizzanello, a tight-knit village where everyone knows each other. A couple gets off: The man, Carlo, a Southerner, is happy to be back home after a long time away; the woman, Anna—his wife—is a Northerner. Carlo’s brother is there to meet them, and he, along with everyone else, can’t help but notice that Anna is as beautiful as a Greek statue.

But Anna is not like the other wives. She doesn’t gossip or attend church. She reads books no one else has ever heard of, exploring ideas that some find threatening. She even wears pants, just like a man, and thinks a woman should have rights, just like a man.

There aren’t many options for a woman with Anna’s sensibilities, so when she learns that the post office is hiring, she leaps at the opportunity. A female letter carrier? It is unthinkable! But Anna passes the postal exam and soon becomes the invisible thread connecting the town as she delivers letters between clandestine lovers, families waiting to hear news of loved ones away at war, and even helps those who can’t read.

Letters connect people, conveying both information and emotion. But for some in Lizzanello, letters are too little and too late.

Francesca Giannone holds a degree in communication science and studied at the CSC, the oldest film school in Europe, located in Rome. She has published several short stories in literary magazines, both in print and online. Currently, Giannone resides in Milan, but her heart remains in her hometown of Lizzanello, a seaside town in the Salento region of Italy. She hopes to return there to live one day.

Elettra Pauletto translated The Letter Carrier. After earning her MFA from Columbia University, she has split her time between writing about her experiences in Africa—specifically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Senegal—and translating fiction and nonfiction works from Italian and French into English. In both her writing and translations, she heavily relies on her background as a former political risk analyst who covered Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.

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All the Water in the World

Read: January 2025

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All the Water in the World

by Eiren Caffall

Today, I began reading “All the Water in the World” by Eiren Caffall. Like Station Eleven, this novel is a literary thriller set partly in New York’s American Museum of Natural History in a flooded future. In the spirit of “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” and “Parable of the Sower,” this adventurous journey offers hope that the most important things—love, work, community, and knowledge—will endure.

“All the Water in the World” is narrated by a girl who profoundly appreciates water. In the years following the melting of the glaciers, Nonie, along with her older sister, parents, and their researcher friends, remains in a nearly deserted New York City. They have established a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History with a strict rule: they may only take from the exhibits in cases of dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park while also working to preserve the collections of human history and science.

When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape northward along the Hudson River. They carry a book containing records of the lost collections. As they race down the swollen river for safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in various, sometimes frightening, ways to the new reality. Despite the challenges, they are determined to create a new world that honors everything they have saved.

Inspired by the stories of curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections during wartime, “All the Water in the World” mediates what we strive to preserve from collapse and an adventure filled with danger, storms, and a fight for survival.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

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The New Wilderness

Read: October 2021

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The New Wilderness

by Diane Cook

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook. The New Wilderness is a timely book and one that resonated with me. When Jan and I met in 1973, it was a revolutionary time with movements encouraging communes and returning to the farm. Neither Jan nor I were interested in living in a commune. Reading this book helped reassure me that we made the correct choice.

The summary of the book is:

Margaret Atwood meets Miranda July in this wildly imaginative debut novel of a mother’s battle to save her daughter in a world ravaged by climate change; A prescient and suspenseful book from the author of the acclaimed story collection, Man V. Nature.

Bea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away, consumed by the smog and pollution of the overdeveloped metropolis that most of the population now calls home. If they stay in the city, Agnes will die. There is only one alternative: the Wilderness State, the last swath of untouched, protected land, where people have always been forbidden. Until now.

Bea, Agnes, and eighteen others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State, guinea pigs in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without destroying it. Living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, they slowly and painfully learn to survive in an unpredictable, dangerous land, bickering and battling for power and control as they betray and save one another. But as Agnes embraces the wild freedom of this new existence, Bea realizes that saving her daughter’s life means losing her in a different way. The farther they get from civilization, the more their bond is tested in astonishing and heartbreaking ways.

At once a blazing lament of our contempt for nature and a deeply humane portrayal of motherhood and what it means to be human, The New Wilderness is an extraordinary novel from a one-of-a-kind literary force.

When I finished this book, I read Pompeii Still Has Buried Secrets by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker. It reminded me of all of the threats to civilization that we face, who will be Pliny the Younger to be “the only surviving eyewitness account of the disaster.” Fleeing our cities for the wilderness is no longer an option!

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The School for Good Mothers

Read: February 2023

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The School for Good Mothers

by Jessamine Chan

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan is a searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle-class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages.

Although it has been forty-two years since I became a parent, I still remember the anxiety of being a father. What if I could not be a good dad? Fortunately, I never had a bad like Frida. or lived in an age where parents would be sent to “a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.”

Reading The School for Good Mothers was a reminder that solutions like this are possible unless we are willing to invest in families so that the skills and support are there to resolve any issues in the home. As a widow, I found Frida’s inner dialogue comparable to the early stages of my grief journey—the total isolation and fear of failing dominated my first months of mourning.

The School for Good Mothers had been on my book list since the middle of last year. I recommend it without reservations! Jan would have already read it, and we would be debating its fine points.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.

Until Frida has a very bad day.

The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.

Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.

Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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The Surgeon's Daughter

Read: July 2022

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The Surgeon’s Daughter

by Audrey Blake

I did something I had not done in decades. After finishing the Big Library Read of 2022, The Girl in His Shadow, by Audrey Blake, I immediately started reading the sequel, The Surgeon’s Daughter. The protagonist, Nora Beady, was such a strong female lead that I could not wait to find out what happened next. In the sequel, Nora Beady, the only female student at a prestigious medical school in Bologna, is a rarity. Nora’s tenacity and passion reminded me of Jan, the love of my life.

In the 19th century, women were supposed to remain at home and raise children, so her unconventional, indelicate ambitions to become a licensed surgeon offended the men around her.

Ms. Blake has a split personality— because she is the creative alter ego of writing duo Jaima Fixsen and Regina Sirois, two authors who met as finalists of a writing contest and have been writing together happily ever since.

The pen name – Audrey Blake – was in response to the publishers recommending a more straightforward author’s name. Regina’s daughter is named Audrey, and Jaima’s son is Blake.

The Surgeon’s Daughter is the forty-fourth book I have read this year and the ninety-ninth since the beginning of 2019. My Goodreads goal for 2022 was twenty-two books.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Under constant scrutiny, Nora’s successes are taken for granted; her mistakes used as proof that women aren’t suited to the field.

Everything changes when she allies herself with Magdalena Morenco, the sole female doctor on-staff. Together the two women develop new techniques to improve a groundbreaking surgery: the Cesarean section. It’s a highly dangerous procedure and the research is grueling, but even worse is the vitriolic response from men. Most don’t trust the findings of women, and many can choose to deny their wives medical care.

Already facing resistance on all sides, Nora is shaken when she meets a patient who will die without the surgery. If the procedure is successful, her work could change the world. But a failure could cost everything: precious lives, Nora’s career, and the role women will be allowed to play in medicine.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Hello Beautiful

Read: March 2023

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Hello Beautiful

by Ann Napolitano

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano is a gorgeous, profoundly moving portrait of what’s possible when we choose to love someone, not despite who they are but because of it. Although several sources recommended Hello Beautiful, I chose the novel based on the title as it is how I always greeted Jan. I highly recommend this book as it is one of the best I have ever read.

Hello Beautiful is an exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women. Knowing it was not him, William Waters’s experience growing up as an only child was an engaging character in the early portion of the novel. However, my hero was Sylvie, the dreamer who pursued true love and found it in a place one would less expect to find it. The consequences of her love reverberate over decades in their families. 

The following passage is one example of a well-written book.

We’re separated from the world by our own edges,” Charlie Padavano says to Sylvie in “Hello Beautiful.” He continues, “We’re all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is.

The interconnections of the characters make this novel one of the best I have read. If only more of us could learn the lessons that Charlie Padavano shared with Sylvie.

As a man on a lifetime grief journey, this exchange echoes my experience.

When an old person dies,” Kent said, “even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They’re like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like your aunt Sylvie dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked over.”

Grief is love.” Now Alice thought: Forgiveness is too.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it’s a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a future different from the expected path of wife and mother; Cecelia, the family’s artist; and Emeline, who patiently takes care of all of them. Happily, the Padavanos fold Julia’s new boyfriend into their loving, chaotic household.

But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable loyalty to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Thrust: A Novel

Read: August 2022

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Thrust: A Novel

by Lidia Yuknavitch

Thrust: A Novel by Lidia Yuknavitch is a book I recommend without reservations. The protagonist of Thrust is Laisve, a motherless girl from the late 21st century who is learning her power as a carrier, a person who can harness the power of meaningful objects to carry her through time. The book begins with the construction of the Statue of Liberty, and Laisve, with the gifts of a carrier, travels through water and time to rescue vulnerable figures from the margins of history.

The novel also focuses on rising waters and an encroaching police state endangering Laisve’s life and family. As a reader who likes historical fiction and time travel, Thrust: A Novel by Lidia Yuknavitch proved to be a page-turner.

The full GoodReads summary provides an overview of this book published on June 28, 2022,

Lidia Yuknavitch has an unmatched gift for capturing stories of people on the margins–vulnerable humans leading lives of challenge and transcendence. Now, Yuknavitch offers an imaginative masterpiece: the story of Laisve, a motherless girl from the late 21st century who is learning her power as a carrier, a person who can harness the power of meaningful objects to carry her through time.

Sifting through the detritus of a fallen city known as the Brook, she discovers a talisman that will mysteriously connect her with a series of characters from the past two centuries: a French sculptor, a woman of the American underworld, a dictator’s daughter, an accused murderer; and a squad of laborers at work on a national monument. Through intricately braided storylines, Laisve must dodge enforcement raids, find her way to the present day, and finally, to the early days of her poor country, to forge a connection that might save their lives–and their shared dream of freedom.

Thrust will leave no reader unchanged, a dazzling novel of body, spirit, and survival.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month are matched dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

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