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After a harrowing voyage from Italy, during which his mother died, seven-year-old Vittorio arrives in Canada with his newborn half-sister, and is reunited with his estranged father, a dark, isolated, and angry figure he hardly knows. The story that follows spans two decades of Vittorio's life within an immigrant Italian farming community in Southwestern Ontario, through his university years, and then into Africa where he goes to teach. At the centre of Vittorio's existence is his strained show more relationship with his father and with his half-sister, Rita. In a Glass House is a haunting tale about perseverance and longed-for redemption. Ricci juxtaposes the intimate, complex world of family, with "its shadowy intricate web of alliances," against the dislocations of the immigrant experience. The result is a richly textured and memorable novel. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Very disappointing. First volume of trilogy, "Lives of the Saints," (1990) is superb. "In a Glass House" (1993) is second volume and so disappointing, given the high expectations one has after the first volume. Canadian novelist and critic Ray Robertson was on target to say " In a Glass House reads more like a memoir than a novel ...the seemingly endless self-analysis that both [Ricci and Proust] authors' protagonists are given to is often overwhelming in its solipsistic repetitiveness ... at times, a kind of cerebral claustrophobia occasionally descends making one wish for something besides the first-person protagonist's troubled soul as an organizing narrative device." Will pass on trying the third volume of trilogy, "Where She Has show more Gone" (1997). show less
This is the middle book of a trilogy. The first book is Lives of the Saints, and the final one is Where She Has Gone.
In this novel, we see young Vittorio arrive in Canada with his new born sister. His mother has died in childbirth on the boat. Vittorio must struggle to reconnect with his father, whom he hasn't seen in many years, as he adjusts to a new culture. These adjustments are complicated by the fact of baby Rita, who is not Vittorio's father's daughter.
This is a moving story. The novel is driven by the characters and by family relationships. Mr. Ricci is able to draw the reader into various situations and create empathy for the characters even if you don't agree with them.
On a personal note, I read the final book first. I then show more read the first one and the second one. I think I enjoyed the trilogy more knowing how it ended. "Back stories" have a unique charm and gave me a different perspective. As George Lucas knows! show less
In this novel, we see young Vittorio arrive in Canada with his new born sister. His mother has died in childbirth on the boat. Vittorio must struggle to reconnect with his father, whom he hasn't seen in many years, as he adjusts to a new culture. These adjustments are complicated by the fact of baby Rita, who is not Vittorio's father's daughter.
This is a moving story. The novel is driven by the characters and by family relationships. Mr. Ricci is able to draw the reader into various situations and create empathy for the characters even if you don't agree with them.
On a personal note, I read the final book first. I then show more read the first one and the second one. I think I enjoyed the trilogy more knowing how it ended. "Back stories" have a unique charm and gave me a different perspective. As George Lucas knows! show less
This is a story of a young Italian boy named Vittorio, or Victor, He
comes to Canada from Italy with his family, and now that he is there, everything is different. He must go to school, learn English and work on his father’s farm, all new concepts to him. It tells of Italian culture as well as Canadian culture, showing the many differences between the two as a young boy struggles to survive with new people who speak a new language in a new world. He fights family problems, such as his dad leaving for days at a time and his mother leaving his newborn baby sister.
comes to Canada from Italy with his family, and now that he is there, everything is different. He must go to school, learn English and work on his father’s farm, all new concepts to him. It tells of Italian culture as well as Canadian culture, showing the many differences between the two as a young boy struggles to survive with new people who speak a new language in a new world. He fights family problems, such as his dad leaving for days at a time and his mother leaving his newborn baby sister.
The first book of a trilogy always seems to be the best!!!
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Author Information
13+ Works 1,126 Members
Nino Ricci was born in 1959 in Leamington, Ontario. He earned a B.A. from York University in 1981, and a M.A. from Concordia in 1987. He spent two years teaching in Nigeria with CUSO, and one year studying in Florence. He served as one of the directors of PEN Canada from 1990-96, and as President during 1995-96. Ricci has won the Winifred Holtby show more Prize for Best Regional Novel for Lives of the Saints; the Betty Trask Award for Fiction; the F.G. Bressani Prize for Prose; the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Governor General's Award, for Fiction. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- In a Glass House
- Original publication date
- 1993
- People/Characters
- Vittorio "Victor" Innocente
- Important places
- Leamington, Ontario, Canada
- Epigraph
"And we shall all come forth without shame and shall stand before Him. And He will say unto us, 'Ye are swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!' And the wise ones and those of understa... (show all)nding will say, 'Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?' and He will say, 'This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.' "
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Cristofiru Culumbu, chi facisti?
Le megghiu giuvintù tu rruvinasti.
Christopher Columbus, what have you done?
You've ruined the best of our young.
-- Calabrian saying- First words
- The town of Mersea rested on a small bluff that looked out over the shores of Lake Erie; and had the waters of that lake not reversed their flow from the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence when some cataclysm of nature opened up... (show all) the Niagara Gorge, the few acres of raised land on which Mersea sat might have remained an island, cut off from the mainland by ten or fifteen miles of shallow lake.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)For an instant it seemed the world could not bear the magnificence of them, must suddenly make itself over, become childlike and bright and unreal as they were to hold them; and then slowly they began to disperse and fade, small dots of color like candy against the realer, stranger hue of the sky.
- Blurbers
- Talese, Gay
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 129
- Popularity
- 252,659
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.62)
- Languages
- Danish, English, German
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 2
