AUDIOBOOK
About
At the heart of Maya Caruso's sharp, tender, insightful and wickedly ironic novel is Silvia Junior: a 42-year-old Italo-Australian workaholic who's nailed career success but flunked personal fulfilment. Romance? She ghosted it sometime after her divorce.
Enter her mother, Silvia Senior: a widowed Italian matriarch with opinions laced with old-school patriarchy and a Rolodex of gossip-hungry nonnas. She's made it her full-time job to remind Junior that she's alone, unmarried and probably infertile. Their relationship is equal parts love, loathing and mutual dependency - a tangle of guilt, meatballs and inherited trauma.
When an old friend resurfaces, Junior's carefully collapsed world starts to expand. There's flirting, there's dancing, there's actual joy. Shockingly, Senior gets swept up in the action too, dipping a cautious toe into the world of dating.
But as both women step out of their comfort zones, life pushes back. Chaos ensues, feelings get messy, and not even a solid plate of lasagne can fix everything. Silvia is a funny, heartbreaking look at what happens when women - especially ones raised to hold it all together - turn their backs on expectations and go in search of themselves. Maya Caruso is a Sydney-based researcher and author whose love of storytelling is as strong as her espresso. The daughter of Italian migrants who arrived in Australia in the 1960s, she grew up in a home filled with loud laughter, much yelling, and endless curiosity about the world. When she's not writing or diving into her latest research project, Maya can be found chasing after her two children or spoiling her very old (and delightful!) dog. Her work blends heart, history and humour, with a dash of Italian flair. Silvia is Maya's first novel. In Italian culture, to be divorced, alone and female was the unholy trinity. It didn't matter that you paid your own mortgage or were leading a semi-functional adult life; it was simply understood you would eventually spiral into alcoholism, drug addiction or prostitution. Possibly all three. The fact that I hadn't yet succumbed to any of these fates was seen less as a triumph and more as a temporary, suspicious reprieve. Perfect Mother's Day release, a mother-daughter story that captures guilt, chaos and fierce love. It's about women reinventing themselves at every age, and the complicated joy of realising that sometimes, you have to parent your own parent. Perfect for readers of Lily Brett, Melina Marchetta and Mhairi McFarlane. Under the Tuscan Sun meets Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird - Silvia is laugh-out-loud funny with a distinctive Italian-Australian twist. Filled with gossiping Nonnas, chaotic dinners, bad dates and unexpected tenderness, the perfect book club pick. A fresh, female-driven story about generational expectations, cultural identity and what happens when women raised to 'hold it all together' finally let go. Italian-Australian culture, food, humour and heart all baked in. Comparable to:
9780140360462 Looking for Alibrandi, Melina Marchetta (Bookscan 12.5k)
9780330422628 You Gotta Have Balls, Lily Brett (Bookscan 9.2k)
9781760876562 Aphrodite's Breath, Susan Johnson (Bookscan 4k)
9781529419498 One Italian Summer, Rebecca Serle (Bookscan 2k)
Enter her mother, Silvia Senior: a widowed Italian matriarch with opinions laced with old-school patriarchy and a Rolodex of gossip-hungry nonnas. She's made it her full-time job to remind Junior that she's alone, unmarried and probably infertile. Their relationship is equal parts love, loathing and mutual dependency - a tangle of guilt, meatballs and inherited trauma.
When an old friend resurfaces, Junior's carefully collapsed world starts to expand. There's flirting, there's dancing, there's actual joy. Shockingly, Senior gets swept up in the action too, dipping a cautious toe into the world of dating.
But as both women step out of their comfort zones, life pushes back. Chaos ensues, feelings get messy, and not even a solid plate of lasagne can fix everything. Silvia is a funny, heartbreaking look at what happens when women - especially ones raised to hold it all together - turn their backs on expectations and go in search of themselves. Maya Caruso is a Sydney-based researcher and author whose love of storytelling is as strong as her espresso. The daughter of Italian migrants who arrived in Australia in the 1960s, she grew up in a home filled with loud laughter, much yelling, and endless curiosity about the world. When she's not writing or diving into her latest research project, Maya can be found chasing after her two children or spoiling her very old (and delightful!) dog. Her work blends heart, history and humour, with a dash of Italian flair. Silvia is Maya's first novel. In Italian culture, to be divorced, alone and female was the unholy trinity. It didn't matter that you paid your own mortgage or were leading a semi-functional adult life; it was simply understood you would eventually spiral into alcoholism, drug addiction or prostitution. Possibly all three. The fact that I hadn't yet succumbed to any of these fates was seen less as a triumph and more as a temporary, suspicious reprieve. Perfect Mother's Day release, a mother-daughter story that captures guilt, chaos and fierce love. It's about women reinventing themselves at every age, and the complicated joy of realising that sometimes, you have to parent your own parent. Perfect for readers of Lily Brett, Melina Marchetta and Mhairi McFarlane. Under the Tuscan Sun meets Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird - Silvia is laugh-out-loud funny with a distinctive Italian-Australian twist. Filled with gossiping Nonnas, chaotic dinners, bad dates and unexpected tenderness, the perfect book club pick. A fresh, female-driven story about generational expectations, cultural identity and what happens when women raised to 'hold it all together' finally let go. Italian-Australian culture, food, humour and heart all baked in. Comparable to:
9780140360462 Looking for Alibrandi, Melina Marchetta (Bookscan 12.5k)
9780330422628 You Gotta Have Balls, Lily Brett (Bookscan 9.2k)
9781760876562 Aphrodite's Breath, Susan Johnson (Bookscan 4k)
9781529419498 One Italian Summer, Rebecca Serle (Bookscan 2k)