Like Family
Hardcover, 146 pages
Published December 1st 2015 by Pamela Dorman Books (first published May 6th 2014)
When Signora A first enters the narrator’s home, his wife, Nora, is experiencing a difficult pregnancy. First as their maid and nanny, then their confidante, this older woman begins to help her employers negotiate married life, quickly becoming the glue in their small household. She is the steady, maternal influence for both husband and wife, and their son, Emanuele, whom she protects from his parents’ expectations and disappointments. But the family’s delicate fabric comes undone when Signora A is diagnosed with cancer. Moving seamlessly between the past and present, Giordano highlights with remarkable precision the joy of youth and the fleeting nature of time. An elegiac, heartrending, and deeply personal portrait of marriage and the people we choose to call family, this is a jewel of a novel—short, intense, and unforgettable.
Review:Like Family
I was searching for a short story to read so I purchased the book 'Like Family' by Paolo Giordano. I had not read anything from him before but saw that he won the Italian Premio Strega, a literary award with his first novel The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which has been translated into more than forty languages.
In the novel, like family, originally titled Il nero e l'argento, the story is narrated by the husband, who we learn, wishes to relocate to Switzerland to advance his career as a research scientist, but his wife Nora wants no part of relocating.
They are a young couple who employ Mrs. A, a middle-aged widow, to assist Nora who's dealing with a difficult pregnancy. Nora must stay in bed so Mrs. A. takes on the house and stays on to take care of baby Emanuele.
We quickly see this story is going to be about a family's struggle with expectations amongst themselves and with the cancer diagnosis and impending death of Mrs. A.
I believe this book left many things up in the air. But the author's eloquently written account appeals to the audience's emotions and reminds us, readers, that our expectations can change our perception of reality and it can also affect others, thus moments in time define and change us if we allow them to.