Review: The Good Left Undone by Adriana Trigiani (audio)

Publisher: Dutton / Penguin Audio

Published: April 26, 2022

Source: Print – Hardcover via Dutton / Audio via Library

Summary:

From Adriana Trigiani, “a master of visual and palpable detail” (The Washington Post), comes a lush, immersive novel about three generations of Tuscan artisans with one remarkable secret. Epic in scope and resplendent with the glorious themes of identity and belonging, The Good Left Undone unfolds in breathtaking turns.

Matelda, the Cabrelli family’s matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother’s great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew. . .

In the halcyon past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of Viareggio until her beloved home becomes unsafe when Italy teeters on the brink of World War II. Her journey takes her from the rocky shores of Marseille to the mystical beauty of Scotland to the dangers of wartime Liverpool–where Italian Scots are imprisoned without cause–as Domenica experiences love, loss, and grief while she longs for home. A hundred years later, her daughter, Matelda, and her granddaughter, Anina, face the same big questions about life and their family’s legacy, while Matelda contemplates what is worth fighting for. But Matelda is running out of time, and the two timelines intersect and weave together in unexpected and heartbreaking ways that lead the family to shocking revelations and, ultimately, redemption.

My thoughts:

It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Adriana Trigiani – I’ve read just about every book she has written and loved each and every one, and while The Shoemaker’s Wife is my absolute favorite, this one may now be a very close second. No one is able to spin a tale of life and draw you into the lives of her characters as deeply as Adriana is.

Multigenerational family sagas are one of my favorite types of stories to read and it’s the type of story that Adriana tells so well. She is able to create such vivid characters and no matter how many she gives us, I have no trouble keeping them separate because they all are so well-developed. Here we meet the Cabrelli family and as usual, I just  fell in love with them, their strong family bonds and even their secrets. This is what hooks you – the fact that these families are in no way perfect. You see the fault lines and you see the trauma and want to know how things are resolved, if indeed they ever are.

I loved the message here about how important it is to share our family stories. As Matelda says, “A family is only as strong as its stories.” This hit me particularly hard as I have recently been missing my grandparents who are long gone and remembering how at holiday gatherings my favorite part would be how stories would be shared from days gone by. How I wished some of this was written down.

As always, I was completely captivated by this story and as much as I wanted to see how it would wrap up, as I got nearer to the end, I also didn’t want my time to come to a close with these characters. I came to care so deeply about all of them and there were definitely some parts that had me in tears…this is one of the more emotional books I’ve read of Adriana’s in a while. I love her books and definitely recommend this one for anyone who loves a good family saga.

Audio thoughts:

I love listening to Adriana’s books – they just translate so well onto audio and this one was narrated by multiple narrators that did such a great job bringing the book to life. The narrators were Carlotta Brentan, Lisa Flanagan, Edoardo Ballerini and Deepti Gupta and they were all phenomenal.