Rita Ciresi

As children, Angel and Lina Lupo want nothing more than to escape their Italian-American Catholic upbringing, but as they deal with the challenges of adult relationships, romances, and the future, they rediscover the value of family bonds and love.

Sometimes I Dream in Italian

When fiery and bold Lisa Diodetto decides to move to upstate New York after a painful break-up, she starts working at a pharmaceutical company and meets Eben Strauss, the stoic and reserved Vice President of Corporate Development, and the unlikely couple embarks on a journey of love and self-discovery. Reprint.

Pink Slip

A collection of seven stories deals with life's passages, many revolving around an important event in the main character's life, such as "Second Coming," in which middle-aged Lorenz tells his brother of his plans to marry a younger woman.

Stories

Mother Rocket

After marrying the man of her dreams, Lisa is confronted with the realities of marital bliss, motherhood, and domestic life as she deals with her husband's long office hours, boring social functions, a messy and ailing child, unfulfilling sex, and her spouse's scorn about her dream of becoming a writer. By the author of Pink Slip. Reprint.

Remind Me Again Why I Married You

No one blends humor and heartbreak like Rita Ciresi, whose award-winning novels are lauded as much for their generous wit as for their unflinching honesty. Ciresi’s crowd-pleasing novel Pink Slip captivated readers and critics alike, introducing two utterly unforgettable characters and a love story both bittersweet and comic. Now Ciresi returns to the people and place of that irresistible bestseller in a riotous and rueful, sexy and poignant tale of married love…a novel that asks how two people who fell desperately, passionately, heartbreakingly in love can sustain a second act. It’s Valentine’s Day, and Lisa Strauss, nee Diodetto, is spending it playing dutiful wife at a $100-a-head benefit instead of in bed with Eben, her hardworking husband of (is it only?) five years. Once upon a time, Lisa, too, was a member of the corporate workaday world--until she fell in love with her boss (Eben), gave birth to a cute but rambunctious son, and gradually morphed into a stay-at-home mom. Somewhere in the mix Lisa also is a writer with ambitions of fame and glory, but those dreams seem to be shrinking, along with her sex life. That is, until a hotshot literary agent shows interest in Lisa’s magnum opus. Suddenly, she has a pen name, and an excerpt of her book appears in Playboy. In between revising chapters, Lisa is trying--and failing miserably--to get pregnant again. She’s going house-hunting with Cynthia Farquhar, the gorgeous blond Realtor/divorcee who has become her closest confidante (and the object of Eben’s secret fantasies). And she’s wondering if this is all marriage is and can ever be: bonded for life to a man who may never again be the red-hot lover of their pre-marriage union. In fact, he just may turn out to be the conflicted protagonist of her novel--a devoted family man whose moral fiber may not be strong enough to withstand the slings and arrows of lust and temptation. As their lives begin to bizarrely mirror aspects of Lisa’s book…as marital life as they know it teeters on the edge of utter chaos, Lisa and Eben search--apart and together--for the answer to the question that has plagued husbands and wives since time immemorial: Can love survive marriage? In a wickedly funny, right-on-target look at love and relationships, Rita Ciresi peels back the layers of a marriage with equal doses of hilarity and humanity. Filled with all the zest, zingers, and unexpected surprises of life, Remind Me Again Why I Married You is this uncommonly gifted author at her lusty and liberating best.

A Novel

Angel Lupo grew up in a traditional Italian home — an exclusive club where Mama’s word was everything ... and where nice girls saved themselves for marriage. All Angel wanted was to be movie-star blond, change her name, and get as much attention as her prettier older sister Lina. Now Angel is nearing thirty, penning Catholic greeting cards for a living, and still jealous of her sister, who has a house in the suburbs, two kids, and a husband who loves her. So Angel does the next best thing: She answers a personal ad. Dirk Diederhoff is blond, teaches at Vassar, and is definitely not Italian. Nor is he the thrill-a-minute lover and soul mate Angel prays for. But as Lina, recklessly embarked on an affair of her own, would tell her: There are no perfect tens out there — only men who want you to talk to them in Italian during sex. The award-winning author of Pink Slip gets the rituals and rhythms of domestic life just right in Sometimes I Dream in Italian, a bittersweet comedy about sisters, lovers, and a family that doesn’t quite translate.

Rita Ciresi

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