Will I love When Walls Talk?

This novella delves into the past as Toni, the protagonist, grapples with some decisions she has come to about her present. The parallel is well-done, and I found myself enjoying Vittorio of the past, an immigrant from Calabria who in many ways quietly leads his family in Chicago's Little Italy, as well as Toni of the present, a young widow ready to begin a serious change and undertaking in her life. That her new undertaking takes place in the same building as Vittorio's reiterates the transcendence of human struggle, family, and prayer. The novella unfolds in nine days through chapters… show more.

The distance in this novella takes a unique form as Toni, working on the building of her bookshop in the space of a one-time bakery belonging to her family, discovers something special in the walls. The discovery takes her to the arrival and experiences of her ancestors in Chicago’s Little Italy, the same locale of the soon-to-be bookshop.

My favorite part of the book is the relationship that develops between the Toni of today and the Vittorio of the past, as well as the understanding Toni comes to about her ancestors through Vittorio’s voice. Time and death present forms of… show more.