Synopses & Reviews
Fiction. The linked stories in GARBAGE NIGHT AT THE OPERA depict an extended Italian-American family living collectively in one apartment building in Brooklyn, New York, across decades as their neighborhood suddenly loses the factory jobs that support it, languishes for a generation, then gentrifies. "GARBAGE NIGHT AT THE OPERA is among the most accomplished and emotionally resonant story collections I have read in years, writes fiction writer Peter Orner. Novelist Kevin McIlvoy writes, "These interrelated stories are a group of small, intense fires that form a large-scale conflagration. Fioravanti's working-class characters try to reverse the spell of hopelessness they have been cast under by family members or by lovers or by the broken promises of Brooklyn."
About the Author
A native of New York City, Valerie Fioravanti now lives in Sacramento, California, where she directs the Stories on Stage reading series, and teaches for the UCLA Writers' Extension. She has held a Fulbright fellowship to Italy and holds degrees from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, and the New School in New York City. Her work has appeared in such publications as North American Review, Cimarron Review, and Hunger Mountain. GARBAGE NIGHT AT THE OPERA, the title story of which received a special mention in Pushcart Prize XXVIII, is her first book.