Name: The Good Left Undone
Rating: 3.916666666666667 (6 reviews)
ISBN: 9780593556450

Adriana Trigiani

A Novel

The Good Left Undone

"From present day Viareggio to Glasgow during World War II, a multigenerational sweeping tale of love lost, family secrets, and reconciliation over decades from New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani"--

Vilandra

What a beautifully written book. It really captured the feel of Italy and being part of an Italian family. The characters are distinct and well crafted, and the story is beautiful. I truly loved this.

Kristen Claiborn

After finishing this book, I realize that I really haven’t read many stories out of Italy from World War II. Most of the more popular books are about England, France, and Germany. I certainly feel like I had to have read at least one other based in and around Italy, but I can’t remember any. It makes me wonder why. Is it because Italy was allied with Germany? Maybe because Mussolini was truly a fascist and Italy would prefer to brush that entire period under the rug? Is it simply because Italy lost and they’d rather not talk about it? There were many things included in this book that I was unaware of and found quite interesting, enough to make me want to do a little more reading. 
	The one word I can use to describe this book is boring. I found it to be incredibly bland. This book should have taken me one, maybe two days to finish, but I struggled to get it done in five days. I found the descriptive paragraphs to be tedious and unnecessary, dragging on to the point my eyes would get blurry. What could have been a compelling story turned into an excessively wordy lesson on what to avoid when trying to maintain an engaged reader. I have never been a fan of alternating timelines, and this one took it to an extreme, going back and forth inside chapters rather than every other chapter. By the end, I was overwhelmed and slightly confused. 
	I found the sheer number of characters overwhelming as well. The author added new characters so often, it became difficult to determine who was a major player and who just had a bit part. Reading about Domenica’s journey, new people were added so often, it became difficult to keep up. I wondered whether I should invest my emotional energy on this new character, or to just disregard them completely. By the end, I really just didn’t care about any of them, it was just too much. And the story about the elephant didn’t make a lot of sense either. It felt like the author put a bunch of characters, storylines, and random plot points into a jar, shook the jar, dumped all the components out and wrote the story based on where everything fell. 
	Now that I’ve been harsh, I will say the story was compelling enough to make me want to get to the end. I wish the author had just stuck with Domenica’s story, because that was the good stuff that kept the book going. Keep in mind, this is just my opinion. Read the book.

Proud matriarch Matelda Cabrelli always has something to say. But, as she faces the end of her life, she worries she's failed to tell the stories that matter. Most of all, the story of her mother Domenica's two great loves. First, her childhood sweetheart- a boy from the same small coastal town of Viareggio. Second, a mysterious Captain- a passion forged in the midst of WW2 - the father Matelda never knew. Now, it falls to Matelda to tell Domenica's story. And for the Cabrelli women to unpick the mysteries, infatuations and tragedies that sent Domenica away from Italy - then brought her home again. . .

The Good Left Undone A Novel

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