The Florios of Sicily

 

The Florios of Sicily / Stefania Auci
trans. from the Italian by Katharine Gregor
NY: Harper Via, 2020, c2019
304 p.

This Italian family saga was a bestseller in Italy, and it's definitely a dramatic and entertaining read. It follows the Florios as they move to Sicily, run a spice and import business, grow their business despite many obstacles, face family tragedies and political issues -- basically climb their way up across a couple of generations from peasants to wealthy business owners with societal caché.

I enjoyed the structure of the book, which helped the reader along; each section is named after a product that expands the Florio business, and begins with a note of the specific dates this portion is set in, and a brief intro outlining the social and political state of Sicily at that moment. There was a lot of movement between French and Neapolitan rulers, independence and constitutions and the like at this time, so these historical notes (which read dramatically) were useful. 

The heart of the book is the Florios themselves, though; the original brothers Paolo and Ignazio, Paolo's wife Guiseppina and their child Vincenzo. The family grows in wealth and influence as the years go by, but also find that they can't overcome their beginnings as "labourers" in the eyes of longtime Palermo businessmen. Also, Vincenzo in particular becomes obsessed with joining the nobility but never quite succeeds in marrying up. He'll have to leave that to his own son Ignazio. 

The story is told in a straightforward manner, no stylistic flourishes. It's a historical novel and so focuses on building up the characters and the setting -- and 19th C. Palermo comes to vibrant life in this book. I didn't realize when I started this that the Florios were a real family that Auci is trying to illuminate in this novel, which was probably a good thing as I usually don't like novels with real people as characters. But because I knew absolutely nothing about them or this setting, it didn't bother me here. I felt that she was respectful to all the characters, even the ones that are not the nicest people. 

I also enjoyed seeing the Florio empire grow; from spices to silks, sulfur to ships, lace, bark and more there is info on each commodity and why it was important to Sicily, all told in a natural way as part of the story. It was a bit soap opera-ish in its ups and downs, but not in a bad way -- it was an entertaining read. There were some really compelling characters who she made into true individuals (my favourite was Vincenzo's wife Guilia). The writing wasn't the feature of the book, but it was also well done in that it didn't interrupt the story, you didn't even really notice it - there were no clunky bits. The translator's note about working with a book that was using a lot of 19th C. Italian dialect was fascinating too; Italian hasn't changed as much as English has in the last couple of hundred years, so she had some decisions to make about how to translate it. I appreciated that the publisher put that note in; it made me look back at the book a little differently. 

Overall, this was a different read from many I've picked up this month, and I really enjoyed this visit to the merchant cities of Sicily.