Inheritance - Natalie Danford

Many years ago I read Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. I absolutely loved it. What I found particularly clever at the time was that Kingsolver wrote the chapters from the different perspectives of the members of the missionary family. The idea of the same story or parts of a story being told by different people at different times was novel to me. I later learned in college that Virginia Woolf was a pioneer of this "literary cubism." But, lately, this idea of breaking up books - telling one part of the story in the odd chapters and the other part in the even chapters - or whatever the case, has really been getting on my nerves. I feel like I'll just get into one time period or character and all of a sudden the author jumps me to a generation later or earlier. Inheritance begins as the story of an Italian immigrant who has lived in the United States for years and who finally gets married and has a daughter. The story then jumps to years later when the man passes away and his daughter travels to a small town in Italy to follow-up a deed she found among her father's possessions. The small town is aflutter with gossip about the deed, and the woman slowly learns (or believes she is learning) truths about her father's life and the reasons he came to America in the first place. The story itself is intriguing, though the character of the daughter is quite self-centered. But, the shifting back and forth between the father's past and the daughter in the present time was too much for me. I felt like I was reading two different books, and I wasn't sure I liked either one. The idea that the stories rumbling around the Italian small town aren't quite right was also a little too predictable. I think this book caught me at a bad time and I just wanted in the mood for the style. It is, however, well written and a nice story about the immigrant experience in America - and that even though they say you can never go home again, sometimes it's better that way.