LEONIE

LEONIE                                                   SVEVA CASATI MADIGNANI
Posted:  Jan. 21, 2014

The Cantoni family lives in a luxurious mansion right outside Milan. For three successful generations, the Cantonis have been running a prominent faucet-manufacturing business. Despite their respectable appearances, every member of the family has secrets and scars that they want to hide. The family rule is to sweep uncomfortable truths under the rug; the streak of madness afflicting Bianca, the dynasty’s matriarch, is therefore kept quiet.
The newest addition to the family is Léonie Tardivaux, a penniless young French girl who marries Guido Cantoni, Bianca’s only grandson. Léonie becomes so much a part of the family that she too adopts the belief that some facts are better left untold. And yet she is a consummate wife, doting mother, and talented career woman who guides the family business through the rough waters of the economic recession. Meanwhile, she harbors her own secret: Every year, for just one day, she leaves it all behind and drives off to a romantic hotel on Lake Como.

 

HUBBY'S REVIEW:

This story is about a women named Leonie and the family that she married into. Each chapter goes back in time and explains the life of the grandparents, parents, and then her husband and her. Where they came from and how they got to be where they are today as a family. Like any good Italian family and other families there are secrets, stories some you tell some you don’t. Some you don’t until you are so old it does not make a difference. Why? Because you are still family and you still have the love of the family. What this book did remind of was one of my aunts who like some of the women in the story just said what was on her mind and that was it. If you had food on the table and a roof over your head you were loved. The women in this story are strong, powerful women. They not only run the home but some also run a business as well. But as Leonie spends time with each one she goes back in time herself and she remembers her childhood and how they took her in after she married there son. Now she is wondering about her and her husband as their five children spend Christmas and they all leave. Will they have a sixth child you have to read the story? A beautiful story set in Italy translated into English. I liked the book the more I got to know the characters and the family. It is a journey through a person’s life who ever that person could be. A good book. I got this book from net galley.