The Swallows of Lunetto

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The trauma of war is intergenerational. The characters know that to be alive is to be broken, that there is no safety in the world. That life means living the questions, the questions that arise from our own selves. Harvard Book Store welcomes JOSEPH FASANO, award-winning author, songwriter, and professor atColumbia University and Manhattanville College, for a discussion of his new novel The Swallows of Lunetto. Fasano's first novel, The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, was published in 2020 to critical acclaim. [10] [11] [12] [13] His second novel, The Swallows of Lunetto, became a viral social media sensation during his 2023 European book tour, covered by the BBC, the Evening Standard, The Independent, and other media. [14] [15] [16] Disappointing. Entire plot seems implausible - over the course of a few hours a woman falls for a man accused of a war-time massacre and leaves her village with him. She knows about the accusation but doesn’t ask for details about what actually happened. And what about the reader? What are the details of the massacre? Why did it happen? We’re forced to infer. And what kind of story was it? On its surface, it had absolutely nothing to do with the plots of those two abandoned manuscripts, but I sensed, and later knew for certain, that what I was doing was alchemizing the abandoned material into the form, the story, the voice it had meant to be all along.

The Swallows of Lunetto by alumnus and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Undergraduate Creative Writing Joseph Fasano '08 was recently bought by Mallory Smart at Maudlin House. The book follows a young couple who escapes from Italian fascism during the end of the Second World War. The book will be published on November 25, 2022.Besides that, the emphasis on dreams is too much, and the dialogue is not realistic, with many a conversation that (either flew over my head or) was just pointless (not a literal quote:) ‘how do you know?’ ‘Know what? I don’t’ ‘you don’t’ ‘I don’t think you’re supposed to know. You’re supposed to be in it.’ ‘That’s where we are?’ ‘That’s where we are.’ From Joseph Fasano, the acclaimed author of The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, comes The Swallows of Lunetto, the powerful story of a young couple's escape from Italian fascism at the end of the Second World War. The novel considers ageless questions about the source of human evil and how society and individuals respond, about personal guilt and forgiveness. And it is about love that looks deep into another’s soul and, with an almost relentless insistence, points out the path to wholeness.

Joseph Fasano is the author of four books of poetry: The Crossing (Cider Press, 2018), Fugue for Other Hands (Cider Press, 2013), which won the 2011 Cider Press Review Book Award; Inheritance (Cider Press, 2014), which has been nominated for the James Laughlin Award; and Vincent (Cider Press, 2015). Fasano’s debut novel The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing was released in 2020 by Platypus Press to high critical acclaim. Learning about one’s ancestors is a two-edged sword. I have personally discovered horror stories: a family massacred by Native Americans; forced conscription; generations of refugees pushing across continents, those persecuted for their faith traveling across an ocean; a runaway teenager fleeing a dictatorial father. And, most appalling of all, a beloved grandfather who spent four months in prison for attempted “ravishment” of a teenage girl.I was thrilled to read this book before its release date as an ARC and I’m so excited for it to be introduced to the public. I wanted to write a review ASAP because I see the anticipation growing here on Goodreads! It is worth the wait, and well worth the anticipation. What had been missing in those previous manuscripts, I now see, was the voice, the inevitable music and thrust of the narrative. Suddenly—and as often happens in life, inexplicably—that voice announced itself to me, and I began writing. The difference, of course, was that now I was listening; I was letting the story have its way with me. Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Joseph Fasano writes about The Swallows of Lunetto from Maudlin House. How do we live with our choices, grow through them and beyond them? How do we love those who have committed evil? How do we live with the legacy of our ancestor’s acts? Joseph Fasano is the author of the novels The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the “20 Best Small Press Books of 2020.” His books of poetry include The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013). His honors include the Cider Press Review Book Award, the Rattle Poetry Prize, and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, “awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year.”