Despite its serious subject matter, Via Roma, is fun to read. The voice is original, the novel full of witty one-liners and quirky insights.

Italy Revisited, Guernica Editions: Mary Melfi explores a mother-daughter dialogue that gives life to the mother’s memories of mid-century southern Italy while also revealing truths about relationships that sometimes exist between immigrant mothers and their children.

Via Roma is an ambitious, encyclopedic, multi-levelled text. It’s peppered with references to large chunks of Western and non-Western culture…. Via Roma interweaves high and low subject matters, the sublime and the demotic, the dream and the fairy-tale-like with the news clip, the poetic turn of phrase with the graphic sexual detail, the refined or erudite locution with the everyday colloquialism…. An extremely rich, engrossing read, with all of Melfi’s witticism, irony and other signature quirks…. a literary milestone.”

Melfi has taken on an important issue for women and, for the most part, handles it with flair … The adorably whiny and angst-ridden Nina is a wonderful creation.