Things Italian

If You Eat, You Never Die: Chicago Tales" by Tony Romano

By Lynna Williams

December 20, 2008

See the full review in HTML at http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/booksmags/chi-1220-if-you-eat-you-never-didec20,0,2740019.story

When Michelino Comingo comes to the United States as a small child, his mother, Lucia, changes the family name to the more "prosperous"—read American—Cummings.

Years later, he takes his father to City Hall to reclaim Comingo as his name. Although he has urged his father to make the change, he still debates how to choose for himself: Will he be Michael Peter Cummings or Michelino Pietro Comingo? As he looks at the other immigrants at City Hall, imagining them Americanizing their names by "lopping off endings, discarding unnecessary vowels" as his mother had done, the choice turns out to be simple. He goes with extending his legacy, "throwing out tug lines across the Atlantic," believing that Comingo is a "passport" to his personal history as an Italian. His younger brother, Giacomo, or Jimmy, will stick with Cummings, a choice that links him to the mother Jimmy faults for so many things over the years.

Family history, collective and personal—and the fault lines that distance people united by blood—is at the heart of Chicago writer Tony Romano's "If You Eat, You Never Die: Chicago Tales." In a series of atmospheric stories, he explores three generations' points of view, constructing a layered portrait of Comingo/Cummings' memories and experience. The structure of the book supports a kind of kaleidoscope: parts that, put together, influence the whole. The result is an evocation of time, place and immigrant experience that comes alive with strong detail.

"He wanted to name me Perla, which means pearl in Italian," says Michelino's daughter, Justine. "He said pearls were lustrous, that no two were alike. But Mother complained that Perla wasn't even a name. Besides, she said, pearls are nothing more than the innards of smelly shellfish. Justine, on the other hand, meant 'upright, just.' Just what? My father always wanted to know."

.............. whom Lucia dispatches to the barber shop for that purpose. There is love between them, which their sons don't always see.

The strongest parts of the collection are the boys' childhood experiences, especially in Giacomo/Jimmy's point of view. In "Milkboy," for example, Jimmy is humiliated by his mother chasing him at the end of a neighborhood game of ring-a-levio, and momentarily turns against the milk man he's helping with deliveries.

The choices we make, and the consequences of them, are everywhere in "If You Eat, You Never Die."

If You Eat, You Never Die: Chicago Tales

By Tony Romano

Harper Perennial 257 pages, $13.95