Honey

by Victor Lodato

Bühne frei für Honey Fasinga – eine Heldin, die Sie nicht wieder vergessen werden

Honey ist 82. So alt, dass Beerdigungen sich nicht mehr anfühlen wie ein Arrivederci, sondern eher wie ein A presto: ein Bis bald. Nach einem Leben als Kunstexpertin in den besten Auktionshäusern von Los Angeles ist sie nach New Jersey zurückgekehrt – in eine Heimat, die sie als Teenager gegen alle Widerstände verlassen hat. Die interessantesten Tage ihres Lebens liegen hinter ihr, glaubt sie. Aber sie irrt sich.

Zurück in der Stadt ihrer Kindheit muss sich Honey ihrer Vergangenheit stellen. Und sie muss sich mit ihrer Familie auseinandersetzen, in deren Garten die Leichen nicht nur sprichwörtlich vergraben liegen. Und plötzlich ist sie sich nicht mehr sicher, was sie wirklich will – Vergebung oder Rache. Victor Lodato erzählt rasant und witzig von Gewaltstrukturen im italo-amerikanischen Milieu und von einer Frau, die mit Witz und Freiheitsliebe ihr ganz eigenes Leben gelebt hat. Ihm gelingt ein einzigartiges Porträt einer hochaltrigen Heldin, das mit seinen liebenswert schrägen Außenseiterfiguren, mit Ironie, Wortwitz und großartigen Dialogen eine Geschichte weiblicher Wut und Rache erzählt, wie man sie so noch nicht gelesen hat.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Family, LGBT, Adult

464 pages, Hardcover

First published April 16, 2024

About the author

Victor Lodato is the author of two critically acclaimed novels. EDGAR AND LUCY was called "a riveting and exuberant ride" by the New York Times, and MATHILDA SAVITCH, winner of the PEN USA Award, was hailed as "a Salingeresque wonder of a first novel." MATHILDA SAVITCH, a "Best Book of the Year" according to The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, and The Globe and Mail, won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize and has been published in sixteen countries.

Victor is a Guggenheim Fellow, as well as the recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Princess Grace Foundation, The Camargo Foundation (France), and The Bogliasco Foundation (Italy). His short fiction and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and Best American Short Stories.

Victor was born and raised in New Jersey and currently divides his time between Ashland, Oregon and Tucson, Arizona.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/given_name_...

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honey Fasinga is an 82 yr old woman who returns to her New Jersey home after having left as a teen due to the violent family life she endured by her mobster family.
While living in California she had a history of working in art museums being surrounded by beauty and had two female best friends .. later when they both passed on…she decided to go home.
Honey never married.. had various lovers.. but in her twighlight years, now.. she has found love again and is dealing with some problems with a young female neighbor and also her great nephew’s family, her family’s violence hasn’t changed. There are many secrets in the family.

This wasn’t a great read for me but there were things to enjoy… I did love her mind and oulook for a woman of her age.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect book. A masterpiece. Honey sits atop the list of my favorite protagonists. So good and so refreshing

[lys · Rating 4 out of 5]

!!!! Wow!

I couldn’t put this down. Honey is easily one of the most intoxicating characters I’ve read in recent memory, and you cannot help but be pulled into her gravity from the first sentence of the novel, in which she turns on the bath with her perfectly painted, peach-colored toenails….at the age of eighty-two.

It is absolutely shocking that this novel was written by a man. Honey’s voice is so well-written, and I appreciated the choice to create a female main character who was not only so irrefutably flawed, but also so open to going against what was expected of her. Honey is vain, somewhat emotionally avoidant, contradictory, perhaps a bit of criminal, and sometimes kind of erratic. Yet, she is lovable, and a refreshingly independent and confident female character. She is alive on the page, and definitely not someone who will slip from my memory anytime soon.

I did find that I got a little bored in the middle of this book, and I sometimes I found myself confused by the way the characters contradicted their own actions and thoughts so frequently. They’d swear each other off just to circle back to each other, declare someone’s behavior detestable just to admit they loved them fervently. But, in the end, I’ve actually found this contradiction and messiness is by far my favorite aspect of this novel. I cannot imagine a more accurate portrayal of life.

4.5 (….so beyond excited to see the author in conversation with Mona Awad at Porter Square Books next month🤓 #ad)

[Leigh Mallin · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5✨ This was a thoroughly enjoyable novel from start to finish. The character of Honey is delightful; I loved her honesty, strength and humor. I laughed out loud throughout the entire novel; however, don’t go into it thinking this is a “light” book. There are heavy issues that Victor Lodato writes about beautifully and with grace and tenderness. Honey’s voice and overall story is unforgettable.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Victor Lodato has amazed me again with his deep perception of human nature and his ability to create wonderful, complex characters. The heroine of this novel is Honey, an 80 year old, full of life woman, and the novel deftly shifts from her many present day activities and issues to reflections of her past life. Honey’s family is part of the New Jersey mob, and their use of violence to solve issues appears in several scenes in the novel. However, as a young woman, Honey left her family to spend the majority of her life in New York and California, and she has recently returned to New Jersey as the novel opens.
Honey is one of the most interesting characters I have ever gotten to know. She is strong but weak, pensive but sassy, and, underneath her exterior, quite loving. There are other very well done characters, including Honey’s young next door neighbor, who makes poor choices in men; a young painter, with whom Honey shares her love of art; and Honey’s nephew, who has exiled his son because he is transsexual. But all the characters revolve around the personality of Honey, as she interacts with them. The novel also contains Honey’s retrospective about many events in her life, which, of course, gives light and depth to the narrative set in the present.
As always, Victor Lodato’s writing is incredibly beautiful. He can perfectly capture deep emotions as well as daily life events and their effect of the characters. I was probably most awed by his ability to take on an 80 year old woman as his main character and fully and wonderfully immerse the reader in her reactions to aging, her ups and downs, and her desire to live fully despite it all.

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book. Honey touched my soul like not many characters have before. Growing up in a Jersey Italian family I really understood Honey. This book was so powerful and special and I will carry it with me for a while.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, loved it, where’s the film??

[Rick B Buttafogo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very simply… I LOVED THIS BOOK!! Perhaps because I’m a New Jerseyite. Perhaps because I’m Italian. Regardless the character of Honey is so endearing you have no choice but to fall in love with her. Stanley Tucci once said…”Italians love to talk about food and talk about death”. So true and so much of that plays out in this book. Incredible cast of characters. Multigenerational Italian family
that hits all the buttons. Honey is such a great character and the words she speaks are so touching and thought-provoking that she is actually someone i would aspire to be more like. I hold to my 5 ⭐️ requirement - the shedding of tears. This certainly did it and i HIGHLY recommend you read it.

[Celine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never read anything like Honey. Truly.

In many ways the narrator-a woman named Honey, is your typical 80-something year old woman. A little behind the times, a little remorseful.

But she is open, too. Funny, sharp, with a quick (and accurate) judge of character. It was beautiful to spend time with her. To sit with her regrets and see how she made room for them. To watch as she lets new people come into her life, despite how hurt she's been from all of the loss that she's accumulated over her life.

She felt familiar to me, but also like someone to look forward to meeting. If that even makes sense.

The last few lines made me well up.

[Cynthia Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfection. I didn’t want it to end, but I couldn’t stop reading if.

[Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sitting here and sobbing a river right now. I’m not sure how to even describe this book. A deeply human novel with unforgettable characters (for better or worse), that is a total standout and original. A book about figuring and navigating through an unpredictable and cruel world - I’ll be thinking about this book for awhile.

[Kindall [Unlimited]]

Content warning: male author describing a woman's body

"Her breasts floated at the surface like so much curdled pudding,"

*vomit emoji**vomit emoji**vomit emoji*

[Dean Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved. Obsessed with Honey.

[Kaia Richman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly was expecting this to be better. It was kind of just giving a more poorly written and less interesting version of A man called Ove.

[Nicole Clapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5!! I loved this story, and Honey, so much. The only thing that I feel slightly weird about is that it’s a woman written by a man, so Honey’s inner thoughts and behavior sometimes didn’t feel completely authentic. Aside from that I loved the story and need to read more books like this! Happy first book finished in 2025!

[Madi Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute masterpiece. I will never forget this book!!!! It changed me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this 6 stars I would. There is not a wasted sentence or word in this masterpiece. The main character, Honey, leaps off the page and into the reader's life. At one point, in chapter 32, Honey is reading a book and she is not believing what the character in the book is saying or doing. Honey wants to tell the author of that book "Shut up, and let the damn character get a word in edgewise." Victor Lodato always lets his characters speak.

At the end he acknowledges the "spirited women" without whom he wouldn't have survived. If you can, read his Modern Love essays in the New York Times (March 1, 2024 and Feb. 24, 2017).

[Amy Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5*
I can’t believe a man wrote this novel! This is essentially a 400 page end-of-life portrait of Honey Fazzinga, the 82 year old daughter of the late Great Pietro, a shady mobster in New Jersey. The book starts with two events that change Honey’s life and then looks back briefly at her younger, turbulent years. There is found family, forgiveness, and heartbreak with a large helping of hope. This is a beautifully written, incredibly detailed story, and Honey is a character I won’t soon forget.

[Ashley Wesner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I kind of want to be Honey when I get old. Sharp and incredibly witty, Honey is so sassy and one of my favorite characters. I would love to sit with her and share a bottle of wine while listening to her stories. She felt so real.

[Therese G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The award for *Best Character Development goes to Victor Lodato for his creation of Honey Fasinga. She is the 82 yr old daughter of a New Jersey mobster and Honey is a delightful account of her fascinating life. Highly recommend!

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someone should turn this into a mini series starring Jessica Lange. I loved Honey and like to think we’re pretty similar.

[Matt Chisling (MattyandtheBooks) · Rating 5 out of 5]

HONEY is a great story with a terrific leading lady at its center. Here’s a novel that should definitely be on your radar!

Meet Honey Fasinga: 82 years old, never leaving the house without a styled wig, a made-up face, and outfits to die for. And Honey is no stranger to death—she’s the oldest living family member in a clan best known for their mob work, which often ended with bodies in bags (Honey’s seen them herself!). Once the family runaway, Honey has finally decided to return home to New Jersey, reconnecting with what’s left of her family, making some strange new friends, and discovering that when the sun is low on the horizon, the shadows can grow quite long.

HONEY is something of a coming-of-age story—a funny feat for a character in her eighties. You’ll absolutely adore this woman, who reads like Lillian Boxfish, but with a Jersey Italian twist. Honey’s lived the high life as a wealthy art enthusiast, and watching her bring that worldly experience back to the roots she tried to leave behind is invigorating on the page. Author Victor Lodato writes what he knows, exploring the struggles of growing up in a place you love but don’t quite belong to. Or maybe the inverse is true for both him and Honey, and this novel helps to unpack which is which.

What makes HONEY so unforgettable is how it uses one character to cover so much ground: Honey is old-school, coming to terms with new modes of dating and partnership, a changing city, new trends in art and culture, and perhaps most compellingly, new expressions of gender and identity that would be unimaginable to a young girl raised in a conservative mafia household. HONEY grapples with acceptance and tolerance in many ways—some lessons Honey teaches others, and some she learns herself. While this isn’t a typical mafia story filled with shootouts, expect some action. There are pitch-black moments alongside hilarious ones (I mean, Jocelyn! Come on!). Wrapped up in an ending that will leave you feeling deeply for the soul of this book, I highly recommend this novel.

Thanks to Harper Books for my gifted copy! HONEY is out now.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this from a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review.
After being estranged from her family for years, Honey has returned to New Jersey to live out her final years. Having witnessed the cruelty and power her father yielded, she left for NYC and then later Los Angeles to reinvent herself, immersing herself in the world of art and beauty. But she has never quite gotten over the pull of her family, and when her grand nephew seeks her help, she sees some of her own vulnerability in him. As Honey navigates new friendships, love, loss, and making amends, she is able to make peace with her past and help those she's come to love discover their own inner strengths.
A beautifully introspective novel about an unforgettable character.

[Briana · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars ⭐️

[Iona Hadinoto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you VL for signing my copy 🫶

[Valeria Molina · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW what a book. This was such a refreshing and hypnotizing read, beautiful writing. Honey is such a unique character and her personality really shines in this book. The story has everything from family, love, friends, and hardships. This book took me a little bit longer to read but im glad I took my time with it, SO WORTH THE READ!!!

[Nancy Wendorf Rosenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do not read

[Roberta Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find it hard to review a well written book with characters that I dislike in a story that doesn’t make me even want to care about them.

That I say the book is well written. It must be for me to most through dislike all the character - major and minor.

Disliking the characters means that my disliking of the story is reasonable. How could characters that I dislike produce a story that I liked —- not logical.

This is a book that I would not recommend to anyone but I do not discourage anyone from reading it as it just maybe that I have known people in my real life who are like these characters. People that I don’t like and do not have in my life.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. A lovely, nuanced story with a protagonist you won’t soon forget and a beautifully fleshed out supporting cast.