Renato!

by Eugene Mirabelli, Douglas Glover (Foreword)

Renato! is the sweeping "autobiography" of Renato Stillamare, a talented yet struggling artist in Boston. It was written across three decades and its parts were released in three volumes before its revision and assembly into this single masterwork. Renato! is a marriage of story-telling forms, and is imbued with matters of love, sex, food, philosophy, religion, and the intricacies of family attachments. The larger canvas stretches from 1860 to the present, and from Sicily to Massachusetts. In his introduction, novelist and critic Douglas Glover remarks "Mirabelli has reinvented the peculiarly Italian, extravagantly melodramatic and often comic vision -- the opera -- in the novel form."

592 pages, Paperback

First published October 23, 2020

Reviews

[Gracie Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a combination of 3 books in a series - the first one is PAINFUL it’s so pointless. Basically like an unnecessarily detailed family tree. 0 stars .. please skip part one

The other two were fairly plotless but really enjoyable to read. It’s kind of a diary of a smart and cultured old man throughout his last ten years but it’s very honest and realistic, although the last 100 pages are a hard read as it is a very personal take on the death of a life partner. Part 2 made me excited to age and part 3 made me dread aging lol. I’m impressed how the book progressed so simply but tackled some really serious truths about life and I love the narrator Renato

Good for a casual read!

[Dan Wilcox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable read.

I'm not one for novels, but when I do read novels, I find myself often reading fat books (this is 577 pages). I've read A la Recherche du Temps Perdu & all of Thomas Pynchon, as well as the generally shorter novels of William Kennedy about my beloved Albany. But I've been bored by some of the contemporary novels I've felt compelled to read in recent years for one reason or another. Not this one.

You should know I once took an undergraduate course taught by Gene Mirabelli on 20th Century British poets (something else that bored me, the poetry, not Prof. Mirabelli).

This is really a collection/trilogy of previously published novels, Goddess In Love with a Horse (2008), Renato the Painter (2012), & Renato After Alba (2016). The combination takes the reader from Italy & the unification in the family saga of the first section, through the first person narrative of the painter in his middle ages in Boston, to the final section's long love poem to Renato's great (there were others), gone love, Alba. The stories are told with humor and compassion and passion, in a conversational, story-teller style. I liked breaking it up, with a cesura between each section/novel, to let the flavors savor & the stories become memories.

This is a book I will be giving as a gift.

[Susan Messer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have recommended this novel (really three novels, now bound together as one) to so many people that I thought I might be responsible for a sales bump. A story about a sprawling Italian family, starting in 1800s Sicily (where distinctions between animals and humans, myth and reality are not particularly relevant) to contemporary Boston--horses, goddesses, painters, gallery owners, coffee shops, food and wine (long, crowded tables and small quiet ones), children and grandchildren, philosophy, and sex. This was the perfect book for me to read in this Covid time, the world in such disarray.

[Laura Kordowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reminded me of a Woody Allen script set in Boston, Massachusetts. It was thought provoking and takes the reader on a journey throughout life's stages, especially like what it can be like in old age. It is also a realistic glimpse into the art world and what it means to be a successful artist.