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Addio, Love Monster
Addio, Love Monster is a novel told in linked stories spanning generations on the “regular” yet remarkable Singer Street of fictional midcentury Mulberry Park, just outside of Chicago. Marrocco transports you fully into this small world where Signora Giuseppa, the “iron fist” of Singer Street, does everything it takes to keep her grown children very near her, no matter what. Where Enrico the widower creeps in the night looking for a new wife in all the wrong places. Where Nicky the golden-gloves boxer wrestles with what he saw in the basement as a child—and Lena, his wife, also wrestles—with how to deal with Nicky’s violence. Each story follows one person, but together they are the story of the neighborhood, a neighborhood that faces life together, whether they like it or not. In these pages you will find humor and sorrow, resentment and adoration, and the churn and change of a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone both too much and too little as time marches on.
Praise for Addio, Love Monster
“In rich, descriptive prose peppered with salty dialogue, Christina Marrocco gives us a penetrating look at several generations of a Sicilian immigrant family. Bookmarked on either end of this novel in stories are two tales focusing upon professional mourner and matriarch Giuseppa Millefiore, who teaches her family that “everything dies”—but not before the entire clan loves, laughs, and dips deep into the gusto that characterizes Italian-American life.”
—Rita Ciresi, author of Pink Slip and Sometimes I Dream in Italian
“Joyce had his Dublin, Ferrante, her Naples, and for Marrocco it’s Mulberry Park, where not much seems to happen, and yet something’s always going on if you look beneath the surface. Marrocco finds the extraordinary in the lives of the folk who inhabit this sleepy suburb of Chicago, creating stories of individuals that she forms into a lively word tapestry, capturing days of lives gone by, reminding us that everyone has a story to tell.”
—Fred L. Gardaphé, author of From Wise Guys to Wise Men
“In Addio, Love Monster, Christina Marrocco has created a world that pulses with life. At the center of that life is the Millefiore family and their iron-fisted matriarch, Giuseppa. Set in fictional Mulberry Park, a suburb of Chicago, on the largely Sicilian-settled Singer Street, Marrocco’s novel-in-stories creates a place that is both familiar and wonderfully strange, a slice of a past time where families and neighbors squabble and gossip and judge, but most of all, they share a love that outstrips those lesser emotions. A wonderful first book by an author with a keen eye and a skillful touch.”
—Patrick Parks, author of Tucumcari
“With a unique and captivating voice and astounding attention to details, Christina Marrocco immerses us in the lives of a multi-generational immigrant family with her debut novel. I know well, these people of Mulberry Park, her fictional, working class, Sicilian-American neighborhood near Chicago. In this sharply focused snapshot of the midcentury Southern Italian immigrant experience, Marrocco populates Addio, Love Monster with people as real as it gets. I love this book.”
—Karen Tintori, author of Unto the Daughters: The Legacy of an Honor Killing in a Sicilian-American Family
Praise for Addio, Love Monster
“In rich, descriptive prose peppered with salty dialogue, Christina Marrocco gives us a penetrating look at several generations of a Sicilian immigrant family. Bookmarked on either end of this novel in stories are two tales focusing upon professional mourner and matriarch Giuseppa Millefiore, who teaches her family that “everything dies”—but not before the entire clan loves, laughs, and dips deep into the gusto that characterizes Italian-American life.”
—Rita Ciresi, author of Pink Slip and Sometimes I Dream in Italian
“Joyce had his Dublin, Ferrante, her Naples, and for Marrocco it’s Mulberry Park, where not much seems to happen, and yet something’s always going on if you look beneath the surface. Marrocco finds the extraordinary in the lives of the folk who inhabit this sleepy suburb of Chicago, creating stories of individuals that she forms into a lively word tapestry, capturing days of lives gone by, reminding us that everyone has a story to tell.”
—Fred L. Gardaphé, author of From Wise Guys to Wise Men
“In Addio, Love Monster, Christina Marrocco has created a world that pulses with life. At the center of that life is the Millefiore family and their iron-fisted matriarch, Giuseppa. Set in fictional Mulberry Park, a suburb of Chicago, on the largely Sicilian-settled Singer Street, Marrocco’s novel-in-stories creates a place that is both familiar and wonderfully strange, a slice of a past time where families and neighbors squabble and gossip and judge, but most of all, they share a love that outstrips those lesser emotions. A wonderful first book by an author with a keen eye and a skillful touch.”
—Patrick Parks, author of Tucumcari
“With a unique and captivating voice and astounding attention to details, Christina Marrocco immerses us in the lives of a multi-generational immigrant family with her debut novel. I know well, these people of Mulberry Park, her fictional, working class, Sicilian-American neighborhood near Chicago. In this sharply focused snapshot of the midcentury Southern Italian immigrant experience, Marrocco populates Addio, Love Monster with people as real as it gets. I love this book.”
—Karen Tintori, author of Unto the Daughters: The Legacy of an Honor Killing in a Sicilian-American Family
280 pages, Paperback
Published May 26, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
April 15, 2023
This book is not a quick read. You cannot gobble it down. The stories and language are meant to be savored.
This collection of interlocking short stories creates the story of a neighborhood. Marrocco invites you into the families and neighbors of Singer Street, an Italian American neighborhood in the suburbs of Chicago. We get the deliciousness of the gossipy tea as well as insight into each character’s personal pain and trauma.
This is one of those books that can invite the reader to laugh and tear up in the same chapter, and being able to move the reader to such emotion is the mark of a skilled writer.
This collection of interlocking short stories creates the story of a neighborhood. Marrocco invites you into the families and neighbors of Singer Street, an Italian American neighborhood in the suburbs of Chicago. We get the deliciousness of the gossipy tea as well as insight into each character’s personal pain and trauma.
This is one of those books that can invite the reader to laugh and tear up in the same chapter, and being able to move the reader to such emotion is the mark of a skilled writer.
January 20, 2023
Stunning debut novel. The imagery and emotion throughout the pages had me weeping,laughing and contemplating the bittersweet reality of life and family. Well worth the read but have Kleenex close by. You truly get a feel for each of these characters alone and as they interact as family and neighbors. Absolutely incredible stories told so beautifully and authentically.
November 16, 2023
I adore beautifully drawn stories populated by memorable characters; stories that come around to reveal themselves layer by exquisite layer. I wasn’t sure what to make of Marrocco’s title, Addio, Love Monster, but the premise drew me in. The family, immigrants, first and second generation Sicilian Americans of the 1950 and 60s Midwest, are endearing, exasperating, and noble. The love monster of the title, Guiseppa Millefiore, loses her husband while raising seven of her eight children still at home. Determined to keep them close, she subtly weaves a web for her sons and daughters on Singer Street by buying up houses and lots and renting them out to her children.
Each of the twenty-one stories features a child, in-law, grandchild, other denizens of Singer Street, even the neighborhood itself, such as the tale of The Day Nothing Bad Happened. Guiseppa is the fulcrum of the tales, which slowly revolve through nearly a generation timespan, neatly tied with a death on both ends. Marrocco’s command of detail creates 3D pictures without overwhelming the senses. “Timing was everything” isn’t a cliché on Christmas Eve, when a most unusual role reversal occurs and we see tenderness beneath the trigger temper of Guiseppa’s son Nicky, who has little memory of his father. It is “sisters who help their brothers miss what they could not recall,” he thinks. Descriptions such as “Each letter looked like a little tombstone,” and Gramma’s blanket “was an itchy sort of thing, probably picked up on a clearance at Goldbatts’s by someone out shopping for something else entirely,” are amusing and poignant as they work to set the tone.
Guiseppa holds her family tight, a mother who defends her children and grandchildren under any and all circumstances and is held in the utmost esteem to her deathbed. She’s teacher, overseer, confidant, sly; the provider most of them don’t ever fully understand and appreciate. One of my favorite scenes is when Gramma counsels her young grandson John about his confession that he thought about everything and concluded there was no God. The fact that he even reluctantly told Guiseppa while believing he’d shock and mortify her, says so much about the power of her love. Guiseppa works to ensure all of her children stay true to the family, even if it means getting them brides or arranging for adoptions from Sicily. Family feuds, family secrets, family dreams all muddle together in a charming and thoroughly entertaining collection of generational stories wrapped sweet and sour, like pollo in agrodolce.
Each of the twenty-one stories features a child, in-law, grandchild, other denizens of Singer Street, even the neighborhood itself, such as the tale of The Day Nothing Bad Happened. Guiseppa is the fulcrum of the tales, which slowly revolve through nearly a generation timespan, neatly tied with a death on both ends. Marrocco’s command of detail creates 3D pictures without overwhelming the senses. “Timing was everything” isn’t a cliché on Christmas Eve, when a most unusual role reversal occurs and we see tenderness beneath the trigger temper of Guiseppa’s son Nicky, who has little memory of his father. It is “sisters who help their brothers miss what they could not recall,” he thinks. Descriptions such as “Each letter looked like a little tombstone,” and Gramma’s blanket “was an itchy sort of thing, probably picked up on a clearance at Goldbatts’s by someone out shopping for something else entirely,” are amusing and poignant as they work to set the tone.
Guiseppa holds her family tight, a mother who defends her children and grandchildren under any and all circumstances and is held in the utmost esteem to her deathbed. She’s teacher, overseer, confidant, sly; the provider most of them don’t ever fully understand and appreciate. One of my favorite scenes is when Gramma counsels her young grandson John about his confession that he thought about everything and concluded there was no God. The fact that he even reluctantly told Guiseppa while believing he’d shock and mortify her, says so much about the power of her love. Guiseppa works to ensure all of her children stay true to the family, even if it means getting them brides or arranging for adoptions from Sicily. Family feuds, family secrets, family dreams all muddle together in a charming and thoroughly entertaining collection of generational stories wrapped sweet and sour, like pollo in agrodolce.
March 13, 2024
Having read this collection of stories twice and listened to the author read them in an Audible version, the residents of Singer street are now occupants of my memory as if I have know them in the flesh.
These beautifully rendered stories illuminate all the complexities and complicity’s of family life - fights and fidelities, faults and frailties, and fierce, fierce love. The characters and their stories abide in a particular place and time, independent of the reader, but they resonate with a clarity that will feel familiar regardless of a reader’s particular background. Definitely worth reading.
These beautifully rendered stories illuminate all the complexities and complicity’s of family life - fights and fidelities, faults and frailties, and fierce, fierce love. The characters and their stories abide in a particular place and time, independent of the reader, but they resonate with a clarity that will feel familiar regardless of a reader’s particular background. Definitely worth reading.
January 19, 2024
Love Monster transports us to a different time, and gives us a taste of nostalgia for a past many of us were not old enough to experience. Marrocco gives us a more fleshed out take of Martin Scorsese and friends. The book is set the height of mob power in the US, but instead of focusing on smokey club houses and deals gone wrong, Marrocco takes us through the ever interesting everyday of the amicis and wise-guys just off screen. The the butcher, the baker (as it were) and the old lady who still cracks the chickens neck with her bare hands in the market. With all the tom-foolery and wisecracking we've come to love from the genre, and a new appreciation for the realities of life, Marrocco adds depth to the story of late Italian immigrants in America
You will laugh. You may cry. Strangest of all, you will get the sensation that you were there.
You will laugh. You may cry. Strangest of all, you will get the sensation that you were there.
February 11, 2023
Beautiful, thought-provoking with memories of family and a different time in life.
April 4, 2023
A raw view of different generations of a family and those connected to them. I really enjoyed the poetry of this book and the somber realities the different family members and characters faced.
February 12, 2024
I loved every minute of reading this book. The cast of characters are developed so deftly that I felt immersed in their lives (and neighborhood) immediately. The writing is so rich and engaging that I forced myself to save it for moments when I could savor it despite wanting to tear through it. A truly beautiful and moving reading experience.
February 11, 2024
I loved getting to know this large Italian extended family and their neighbors. The book consists of a series of stories told from the perspective of various characters in their small close-knit community on the outskirts of Chicago - where many people are related by blood or marriage. The format of the book - where each story could stand alone, but built on other stories - made the book an easy read. I loved following the family traditions, flaws, fueds, semi-secrets, and, most of all, observing their love. The stories resonated with me. Even though my family wasn’t Italian, I grew up in the 1960s in a small town on the outskirts of a larger city - a community where many people were related and no one ever seemed to move away. The author artfully addresses historical situations as well as misguided ideas and unfair situations that I recall from my memories as a child growing up in the same time frame, while still focusing on the same community of immigrants, their children, and grandchildren. I’d definitely recommend this book!
January 18, 2024
I read a lot, of everything, in all sorts of formats. I can't help but notice how language is used. Saying this, short stories I struggle with as I feel a little let down when I invest time in transient things. But I can say that Addio, Love Monster, for a brief period, spoiled reading for me as the books I picked up thereafter failed to hit the same mark. It's a classy, timeless piece of writing. Like the cement sink in Mamma's basement, time can drain away the blood of most releases, but I have the feeling that Addio is a stayer, a slow smouldering burner that will remain in the consciousness of the reading people for a long time. The authors voice is immediately accessible, from the word go. As a Welshman reading an American author telling a story about Italian immigrant issues in the U.S. I was happy to invest. From the first brown snuff stains of dribble to the last too tight brown tie near the end, this was a squirming I enjoyed. This publication is high end use of contemporary language. Femininely subtle. And I'm fussy.
March 10, 2023
Loved this book!
Such a great book. The characters were so real I felt like I knew them and they lived in my neighborhood. The era of 50's 60's was spot on. Bravo, Christina. Such a good author.
Such a great book. The characters were so real I felt like I knew them and they lived in my neighborhood. The era of 50's 60's was spot on. Bravo, Christina. Such a good author.
July 12, 2024
Christina Marrocco's short stories, Addio, LOVE MONSTER, transported me to a Chicago suburb, circa 1950's. Her characters, mostly Italian extended family, surprised me, inspired me, and coaxed me to reevaluate my life--loved ones I've all but forgotten, childhood memories I tried to forget but haven't, and family I must connect with before it's too late.
"To Be a Cat is a Fine Thing" is written from a cat's point of view. It's perfect. It's raw, wild, and ironic. "Little Big John and the Atheism Problem" was my favorite. The dime and the slobbery smooch forced me to reflect on my own beliefs. The last sentence must be read by everyone who has or is questioning the existence of God.
Addio, LOVE MONSTER: a must read.
"To Be a Cat is a Fine Thing" is written from a cat's point of view. It's perfect. It's raw, wild, and ironic. "Little Big John and the Atheism Problem" was my favorite. The dime and the slobbery smooch forced me to reflect on my own beliefs. The last sentence must be read by everyone who has or is questioning the existence of God.
Addio, LOVE MONSTER: a must read.
January 11, 2026
20 years of interconnected stories from a block in the fictional Italian-American heavy Chicago suburb of Mulberry Park, heavily populated by several generations of the Sicilian-American Millefiore family. Christina Marrocco knows all the details that those who grow up in such a neighborhood know and they come up in unexpected ways and vignettes throughout, but that nostalgia is just a bonus. The lush depictions and also dark and funny observations of the external details and inner lives of the characters and their world are just magic. I often take books I read to one of the many Little Free Libraries near me for a stranger to enjoy, but this one I'm keeping so I can pass it on to a friend.
April 5, 2024
Slice of life snapshot
This book was a rich and vibrant description of the life and times of an Italian immigrant family and neighborhood outside of Chicago in the 50s and 60s. I read each connected but separate chapter as a short story, savoring the rich and detailed snapshot of people, place and times. Enjoyable read, the pictures and thoughts about the stories have lingered.
This book was a rich and vibrant description of the life and times of an Italian immigrant family and neighborhood outside of Chicago in the 50s and 60s. I read each connected but separate chapter as a short story, savoring the rich and detailed snapshot of people, place and times. Enjoyable read, the pictures and thoughts about the stories have lingered.
February 25, 2024
As someone who wants to write a short story collection one day, "Addio, Love Monster" turned out to be a very good inspiration.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews