The Stone Boudoir: Travels Through the Hidden Villages of Sicily
*Starred Review*  Maggio opens her tale with a memory of sitting under her grandparents' grape arbor in Carldstadt, New Jersey, wondering if their memories of Sicily were hard-wired into her consciousness. These essays, written over many visits, illuminate tiny Sicilian towns with glorious names: Polizzi Generosa (Martin Scorsese's father was born there); Catania, where men celebrate the feast of Sant'Agata, who was martyred by having her breasts cut off; Sperlinga, where generations have lived in apartments cut in caves that Maggio compares to hobbit-holes. Maggio writes pristine prose unsullied by prettiness or sentimentality. She finds a number of women unencumbered by marriage--like the twin pharmacists, Antonietta and Rosaria--who accompany her, stay with her, or simply allow her to view their lives. She writes of the clothed, dessicated corpses in a crypt in Palermo; of watching Etna's lava flow engulf a flowering pear tree in Zafferana Etnea; and of Santa Margherita, her grandparents' town, destroyed in an earthquake in 1968. She adores Sicily, taking as her metaphor the living stone from which the island takes its building material, the taste of its water, the color of its contours. With Mary Taylor Simeti'sOn Persephone's Island(1994), this memoir offers an austerely voluptuous pleasure for anyone seeking the heart of Sicily.GraceAnne DeCandidoCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved