Adriana Trigiani, THE VIEW FROM LAKE COMO: A Novel
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
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[0:44]Adriana Chichiani is back on the podcast to talk about the view from late Como, a novel.
[0:50]Adriana Chichiani is the New York Times best-selling author of 21 books of fiction and
[0:55]nonfiction.
[0:56]Her work has been published in 38 languages around the world, an award-winning playwright,
[1:01]television writer, producer, and filmmaker.
[1:03]Chichiani wrote and directed the major motion picture of her debut novel, Big Stone Gap,
[1:08]adapted her novel, very valentine for television, and directed the documentary, Queens
[1:12]of the Big Time, Among Others.
[1:15]In 2023, President Sergio Matarela of Italy, awarded Chichiani the Cavillieri, Del
[1:21]Ordine della Stella D'Italia, the Library of Virginia, bestowed their highest honor,
[1:26]the patron of letters degree to Chichiani in 2024.
[1:29]She received the 2025 Ellis Island Medal of Honor for her significant contributions
[1:34]to literature, culture, and community.
[1:36]Chichiani grew up in Appalachia in the mountains of Virginia, where she co-founded the
[1:40]Origin Project, a year-round in-school writing program that has served over 25,000 students
[1:46]since its inception in 2014.
[1:48]Chichiani is proud to serve on the New York State Council on the Arts.
[1:51]She lives in Greenwich Village with her family.
[1:53]Welcome back, Adriana.
[1:55]I'm so excited to have you on totally books with Sivi to talk about the view from Lake
[1:59]Como.
[2:00]Congrats.
[2:01]Thank you so much.
[2:02]I am thrilled and honored to be here.
[2:04]You know I adore you.
[2:05]Yeah.
[2:06]I adore you too.
[2:07]Thank you.
[2:08]Okay.
[2:09]At first I thought, oh great.
[2:10]I'm going to Lake Como.
[2:11]And then I was like, what?
[2:13]Lake Como, New Jersey?
[2:14]What the heck?
[2:15]Okay.
[2:16]So your book starts in New York City.
[2:17]You get both.
[2:18]I know.
[2:19]No, no, no, no, no.
[2:20]Miss Liedard, our listeners who get both, but you know, you know, at different stages
[2:27]of your life, you do different things and people were getting married in New Jersey for
[2:31]I had cousins getting married down there and different.
[2:33]And we found ourselves in New Jersey a lot and I just started nose and around and I found
[2:37]this town like Como and I thought this was hilarious.
[2:39]It's like, is your sister sitting like Como Italy like because my mother's people are
[2:44]Lombardi.
[2:45]And so we're from that area.
[2:47]So I started nose and around and found out that the town changed its name.
[2:53]It used to be South Belmar.
[2:54]This made this made it more hilarious to me because the property values were plummeting
[2:59]and they wanted to resuscitate this town.
[3:03]So they took a vote and they renamed it Lake Como and the rest is history and the rest is
[3:07]history and I just, you know, when I go to write a book, it happens on many layers
[3:13]and this character, Jess Barada just got divorced and she's really living in her parents'
[3:19]basement sad and she has to rebuild and I thought how interesting that she's living in
[3:25]a town that had to rebuild.
[3:27]Totally.
[3:28]I love that.
[3:29]Okay.
[3:30]Tell listeners what the book is about.
[3:31]Well, you know, I kind of, here's my elevator pitch that it's the story of a woman who
[3:38]rebuilds her life and the house that goes with it.
[3:42]And there's a lot of things on my mind that fed into this for the three year process
[3:47]of writing it that I contemplated and one of them is like, where do I feel that most of
[3:53]pieces in the world and the truth is I feel a piece in my grandmother and mother's hometown
[3:58]on the mountain in Italy.
[4:00]I just do in the snow, like I like snow and one of those people and when I say a piece,
[4:06]I mean in communion with the ever after.
[4:10]So that I wanted to write about that and then, and in so many times too zippy, we make
[4:16]mistakes that we think are mistakes and they bring a shame and guilt and whatever, but that's
[4:22]not really what they are.
[4:24]They're just like doorways to another life and so I wanted to dramatize that in a book
[4:28]and so it's true of every layer of the book.
[4:31]Yeah.
[4:32]Well, even though the book is about Jess, it's also about Uncle Louis and what happens
[4:38]with his life and some of his decisions and as he, you know, this is fairly on, I feel
[4:44]like I'm not giving too much away.
[4:46]I don't know.
[4:47]But, you know, when he when he passes away very sort of dramatically and she finds out
[4:52]all of this stuff about her uncle who's basically like her dad.
[4:55]I mean, they're so close and he's been such a role model to her and then she has to uncover
[5:00]all these sort of family secrets that lay dormant and yet you put it all under the context
[5:06]of like the marble industry, which who knows anything about, which is so fascinating.
[5:12]Talk about that relationship, the uncle niece relationship, which by the way does not get
[5:16]a lot of airtime in fiction.
[5:19]No.
[5:20]Well, you have the ARE and eventually I dedicated it to my four uncles that have passed
[5:26]away that each one were very different people.
[5:29]But I got something from each of them and when I dived into the relationship between
[5:34]Uncle Louis and Jess, you find that there's a level of honesty there that you can't
[5:40]have with anybody else and she is in the family business with him.
[5:44]So they're the last two men standing.
[5:47]Her mother's complicated or her uncle Louis tried to give his sister a job.
[5:51]She's just was terrible with the public, but he can't tell her that and they go on and
[5:56]off from not speaking.
[5:57]I don't know if in your family do people not speak or is that an Italian thing?
[6:01]Um, is that go the, we set up to the island.
[6:04]That's when we're not talking to all the island.
[6:06]And we all speak.
[6:08]It's what's not said.
[6:09]I think that's interesting.
[6:10]Okay.
[6:11]That's fascinating.
[6:12]Okay.
[6:13]Well, this is true too.
[6:14]Well, it's what's not said and then not and then holding a grudge one, maybe if we spoke,
[6:19]we could work it out.
[6:20]But this is how they deal with things and they never when they start resume speaking,
[6:24]but they solve the problem.
[6:26]So it was repeated and there's this idea that this kind of behavior reverberates in life.
[6:33]So she's going to have to make a break with that somehow, even though Uncle Louis isn't
[6:37]here to work it out with.
[6:40]He's present through the whole book, but he isn't present physically through the whole
[6:45]book.
[6:46]So as she's working it out and she makes a determination that she needs help.
[6:54]She can't do this on her own.
[6:56]So she's the first person since he had trust guns in this family that want to see a therapist,
[7:00]but she doesn't go to see him in an office.
[7:02]She goes online.
[7:03]Yep.
[7:04]Yeah.
[7:05]And of course, her mother says, go to the priest.
[7:06]It's free.
[7:07]Let's say called like true tech or something and a new step, new stuff.
[7:12]There are me.
[7:13]There are me.
[7:14]There are me.
[7:15]There are me.
[7:16]There are me.
[7:17]Yes.
[7:18]Which is also fascinating.
[7:19]We could all use a little health.
[7:20]I'm sure.
[7:21]Why not?
[7:22]You write your problem down in the morning.
[7:23]It's awesome, buddy.
[7:24]What do I do about this?
[7:25]Got any ideas?
[7:26]Yeah.
[7:27]Yeah.
[7:28]Yeah.
[7:29]Perfect.
[7:30]I found myself kind of wanting just to get back together with her ex.
[7:33]I don't know why.
[7:34]And I was like, why did she do that?
[7:36]And you say at the start that like the whole town wanted them to reconcile.
[7:40]Right.
[7:41]There was like a huge movement.
[7:43]And you know, as someone who's divorced, I'm like, oh, no, no, no, they should not reconcile.
[7:46]There's a reason.
[7:47]But then as it kept going on, I was like, wait, I don't know where's this going?
[7:53]Well, you know, there's a moment in the book when they realize what they need to each
[7:58]other.
[7:59]And sometimes, you know, we don't know, to me, just between us two girls here.
[8:08]I think it's a mystery.
[8:09]What makes a marriage work.
[8:11]I mean, you could say communication and this and that, but it's just sort of something
[8:15]you sort of know.
[8:17]It's the same feeling you get when you know you need to get out of a relationship
[8:21]that you, you can't stay in it another minute.
[8:25]If you do, you'll just shrivel up and die.
[8:27]I mean, so those two energy fields fed this novel too, because I wanted her to reconcile
[8:36]that that she could love or appreciate or not her ex-husband and maybe get back together
[8:44]with him if they were a different place.
[8:47]But as the novel unspools, you find out what happened.
[8:50]It's the way they, she reacted and he reacted to this trauma.
[8:54]And it was never going to work, right?
[8:57]Or maybe it would, but she'd have to be the master of her destiny.
[9:01]So for the, for the listener, you're going to get a very beefy choice here between two
[9:08]people for her and, and I, I kept saying to the publishers, my beautiful publishers of
[9:14]Penguin Random House at Dutton kept saying to those folks, hey, this is a self-love story.
[9:19]As somebody who has to, she's not going to navigate this through relationship.
[9:25]She's going to navigate it through her life experience.
[9:28]Very interesting.
[9:29]Plus, you throw in not only the travel through self and identity, but literal travel
[9:34]where you take us, you do take us out of New Jersey.
[9:36]Thank you very much.
[9:37]I mean, not that there's anything wrong with New Jersey, but you know, everybody likes
[9:40]a little travel, grab the passport.
[9:43]So you do offer us that sort of escape and through Jess's eyes and what can we learn from
[9:48]other cultures and where is our happy place in life?
[9:51]There's a Italian sculptor, a young sculptor named Jago, J-A, G-G-O, some say Jago, some say
[10:00]The Jago.
[10:00]Let's say Jago.
[10:01]Let's say Jago.
[10:02]He's Italian and they call him the modern Michelangelo
[10:07]and I was invited or Michelangelo.
[10:10]And I was invited to a screening of the film
[10:13]about his life and his creations.
[10:16]And he has created or to the new,
[10:20]and the idea of marble when it seems sheer like fabric,
[10:24]you know, like Michelangelo did.
[10:27]But here's the thing, Zibi.
[10:28]All that marble came from one source on one mountain.
[10:32]And it shall until the end of time.
[10:34]They will never use up the marble on that mountain.
[10:37]It is shared off.
[10:38]It is not blasted anymore.
[10:40]It hasn't been blasted since the 70s.
[10:41]It's cut.
[10:42]He's been, I explain all of that
[10:44]because I am fascinated by the craftsmanship of this.
[10:48]The idea of marble is that it's very durable.
[10:51]Obviously, the David is still standing.
[10:54]It's very durable, but if you just tap it
[10:57]in the wrong way, turns to dust.
[11:00]And she observes this, just Barata observes this,
[11:04]that that's her heart, really, herself or soul.
[11:08]Like it's like a woman.
[11:10]You tap it just in the wrong way, goodbye.
[11:13]We are finished, right?
[11:16]And I loved how that, she's a draftsman.
[11:19]We should say that, which I got into that.
[11:23]If you go to New Jersey,
[11:24]there's a lot of Italian marble there
[11:25]because that support where it comes in
[11:27]so there's a lot of marble.
[11:29]Carara marble, we should say Carara, Italy and Tuscany.
[11:32]So it's all part of the whole waft and weave of who she is.
[11:36]It's like her, her life with her family,
[11:39]her parents, her brother, her sister,
[11:42]her, you know, the idea that maybe some day she'll have
[11:44]children, their children.
[11:46]She's the maid not, even though she's been married.
[11:51]She is the sister who is going to end up being the caretaker
[11:54]in our Italian heritage.
[11:56]There's always one that stays home and does that
[11:58]or becomes a nun or a flight attendant.
[12:02]And one of those careers.
[12:03]And if that's the case, you know,
[12:06]then we have a story about somebody who has to say,
[12:10]oh, that's the role you put me in,
[12:13]but that's not the role I necessarily want to live.
[12:16]And so that's really what it's about
[12:18]because a lot of us are walking through life.
[12:19]There's a line after door people want to tell us
[12:22]how to do what we do.
[12:24]But that's not the way to do it.
[12:26]The way to do it is it to be self motivated,
[12:29]what fills you up, what makes you complete.
[12:32]Who is your life partner?
[12:35]Where it's not dictated by a culture
[12:37]just because he's the cutest guy in town.
[12:39]And he's the most prosperous.
[12:40]Doesn't mean you have to marry him.
[12:42]Let that echo throughout the town's people like us.
[12:47]That's right, that town.
[12:48]Yeah, exactly right, exactly right.
[12:51]And so have you had an experience
[12:54]where your heart turned to dust?
[12:56]Well, that's an interesting question, Zinn.
[12:59]I am someone I'm going to be really honest
[13:02]where I love what I do so much.
[13:05]That was always my focus.
[13:08]So, you know, crush is this or that.
[13:10]And I really married the man I fell in love with.
[13:14]I did not fall in love with anybody else.
[13:16]Now, is that weird?
[13:17]People are going to write in because,
[13:19]and I'm going to take it a step further.
[13:21]I don't really like the feeling of falling in love.
[13:24]There people who are addicted, it made me sick.
[13:26]It's dizzying to me.
[13:28]Evidently, something chemically happens in your brain.
[13:30]And like, and while I love him and I'm still with him
[13:34]and we're married and all of that,
[13:36]I know you experienced this with Kyle,
[13:37]but it's like it's a thing.
[13:39]It's like that you know that I don't question it, right?
[13:44]When you start to question it, well, you know what?
[13:47]I say, check the exits, that's it.
[13:50]Check the exit, get the hell out of dodge.
[13:53]Okay.
[13:54]But that's so interesting, the idea that one could be
[13:57]essentially allergic to falling in love.
[14:00]It's not the story in itself,
[14:01]but you have to keep it running away from love.
[14:04]Yeah, it's not that it wasn't pleasurable,
[14:09]but I found it very odd.
[14:11]I found it, and then I had friends tell me
[14:15]they love that feeling of that roller coaster
[14:18]for the first six weeks or whatever.
[14:20]And I'm like, wait for me, maybe don't like heights.
[14:23]I don't know, but it's just, I like the abiding part of love
[14:30]of the mistake making part and not being my best every day
[14:34]and then trying to do better.
[14:36]And you really know if you love someone when they get sick.
[14:43]If they drive you crazy, they're checked the exits.
[14:46]I mean, but if you find yourself naturally,
[14:50]everything falls away and I am caring for this person,
[14:53]I think that's a pretty good.
[14:54]Do you agree?
[14:55]I think that's a good indicator.
[14:57]I mean, do we have to extend this to dental work?
[14:59]No.
[15:01]Okay, then yes, I agree.
[15:02]That's the worst.
[15:04]That's the worst pain and on the planet.
[15:05]Yeah, that's funny.
[15:07]No, I think that's what I like to wrestle with
[15:10]when I'm writing novels.
[15:11]I don't get to live everything,
[15:13]but I certainly can imagine everything.
[15:16]And if I can imagine it, and I can write it,
[15:18]and if I can write it, then I can make something, you know,
[15:22]manifest for the audience, for the reader,
[15:25]for the woman reading the book.
[15:27]So when you kept going back and writing more and more
[15:30]into this book, click on a day where maybe you didn't feel
[15:33]like writing so much, what was it that kept calling you to it?
[15:37]Well, you know, when you're in one of those places
[15:40]where it seems sort of hard, look down the road
[15:43]and your plot a little bit.
[15:45]And what you're gonna, this is just true of me
[15:47]for the writer's listening,
[15:48]but I pulled the scene that's waiting for me forward.
[15:52]And I actually did it when we were editing
[15:54]the big stone gap movie.
[15:55]The editor was had reached it.
[15:57]He was bollocksed up and I went,
[15:58]take that scene, there, put it here.
[16:02]And once we did that, then we had a path.
[16:05]So a lot of times, it's not about staying stuck
[16:09]and trying to push through the stock,
[16:10]pull something forward that you know you're gonna do.
[16:13]Because a lot of times what writers do is they know
[16:15]they have this big scene coming.
[16:18]So there's a build to do the big scene.
[16:20]See what happens.
[16:21]Then you can move it around and play with it.
[16:24]Excellent advice.
[16:25]Yeah, for me, in the book, there's two,
[16:29]there's two, I could call them comedy block scenes
[16:32]and television and film,
[16:33]but they're the family, everybody's there.
[16:37]And so you have a myriad of voices,
[16:40]which I love those scenes,
[16:41]like where there's a party and somebody shouts something
[16:43]and I love them.
[16:45]And your clues are in that scene.
[16:48]Because from the big scene,
[16:50]you'll see where you paired off people
[16:53]and then that can create the entree into the scene.
[16:56]So just basically write a party.
[16:58]Write a party, write a meal,
[17:01]people creating something together,
[17:03]something that they're doing that is a common purpose
[17:06]and you'll find it in there.
[17:09]Like marble, perhaps?
[17:11]Like marble.
[17:12]Like marble, get that marble.
[17:13]Did you just love that scene when the marble's coming up?
[17:15]I went and watched that happen.
[17:17]I love that marble coming off that tankard.
[17:19]I was literally thinking through this whole,
[17:20]I was like, oh my gosh, how much research did she have to do?
[17:24]Like, did she know any of this before?
[17:26]Did you?
[17:27]I mean, this is a lot of detail.
[17:28]Well, I knew a little bit,
[17:31]a little bit just from my travels, did it, Lee.
[17:34]I knew a little bit.
[17:35]But then I wanted to understand how they sell it,
[17:39]get it off the map.
[17:40]This also was interesting to me.
[17:42]I counted, they do that.
[17:43]Cause I had my great grandfather, Dabi Dao,
[17:46]which is David and Italian,
[17:47]Dabi Daphereen, a Venice Venetian.
[17:51]He was from the Veneto.
[17:52]He only had three fingers on one hand.
[17:55]And he took a job, he was a farmer.
[17:58]This, he ended up to be quite prosperous.
[18:00]Sippy and Sippy, he's like, did a whole thing on that,
[18:03]where he bought this piece of land in Pennsylvania
[18:05]and just kept adding to it.
[18:06]He was very American entrepreneurial,
[18:09]even though he was Italian Venetian.
[18:11]Anyway, there's a whole story to how he lost those fingers
[18:15]in a quarry, slight quarry in Pennsylvania.
[18:18]Cause the most, the worst job in a quarry is the blaster
[18:23]is the guy who handles the dynamite.
[18:25]And one of it was not stacked properly
[18:28]and it blew his fingers off.
[18:29]Well, I didn't mean to like ruin our day,
[18:31]but learned to manage with the three, he was great.
[18:34]But that, I always wanted to understand how that happened.
[18:38]And so when I went to Carara, now they shear it,
[18:43]okay, they block it, it's almost like they put points in it
[18:46]and they take it off like in blocks.
[18:48]In the old days, they blew it up.
[18:52]And then what came down that wasn't shattered,
[18:56]they used and they realized they were wasting.
[18:58]So that, see, that's the stuff I get into.
[19:00]It's like, and going up the mountain and,
[19:04]well, where were the offices?
[19:05]I went in a trailer and that, that conjured all those scenes
[19:09]and the historian who's along for the ride
[19:13]and what all that meant and how she,
[19:16]she didn't know where her career was gonna go.
[19:20]She didn't know where it was gonna go.
[19:21]She knew she knew how to do what she did,
[19:24]which was draft, but maybe there's something else for her.
[19:28]I feel like that analogy also applies to writing.
[19:31]Like at first, you just keep blowing things up.
[19:33]And then as, as you get better, you can like,
[19:36]you can see what's under, you can be under better.
[19:40]But that takes time.
[19:42]That really takes time.
[19:43]You're making a great point about writing
[19:45]because you can know something for sure, you think.
[19:50]And then you get it down and you go,
[19:51]oh, that's not where this is supposed to go.
[19:55]And, and, and you work it out, you figure it out.
[19:58]So.
[20:00]You spend your time writing,
[20:02]but you also are uplifting authors talking to people,
[20:05]podcast, you do like so many different things.
[20:07]Well, you're my sister in crime with this.
[20:10]I'm just saying, which I love.
[20:12]Are you because you're a writer?
[20:13]You're a novelist and you do this, okay?
[20:16]Look, I started doing this six years ago.
[20:19]I was terrible.
[20:20]And like we get better as we do it,
[20:24]but I'm just deeply curious.
[20:26]Mm-hmm.
[20:27]And I would have these conversations anyway.
[20:30]So I just started to think,
[20:31]well, get a book comes in and I get really interested.
[20:34]Like tomorrow, I'm talking to David Litt about surfing.
[20:39]I wouldn't anymore surf in the man in the book,
[20:42]but it's riveting today, Susan Morrison,
[20:45]who wrote the biography of Lauren Michaels.
[20:47]You've had these folks on it, so you know them.
[20:49]And their books are revelatory.
[20:53]And if I can help sell them for them,
[20:55]whatever I can do, I wanna do that.
[20:57]Because put it in the hands of librarians,
[21:00]put it in the hands of readers,
[21:02]put it in the hands of people wanna discuss things.
[21:05]You know, my mom was a librarian
[21:06]and she said there's an answer for every problem
[21:09]in the world in the library.
[21:11]Any problem we have, you know,
[21:14]personal, spiritual, emotional, practical,
[21:17]there's a manual or there's a book
[21:19]or there's a point of view.
[21:20]So I love doing it.
[21:22]So it's a lot of work that Zippy,
[21:24]we always call you St. Zippy behind your back
[21:27]because we don't know how you do it.
[21:29]I'm always, when I'm on an airplane,
[21:33]I've got three books with me.
[21:34]I've got a fin in it, sure, I've got it, you know.
[21:36]And you can put it however you want,
[21:38]which is beauty of this, but it's a huge service
[21:42]to the reader, to the listener right now.
[21:44]It really is.
[21:45]And I thank you for it.
[21:46]I think it's fair.
[21:47]Well, I thank you too.
[21:48]And I think, like you, I am also curious.
[21:50]And so, yes, of course we're doing this for authors,
[21:53]but also for ourselves.
[21:54]Because it's so fascinating.
[21:56]Your brain gets, I don't you feel you're a better writer
[21:59]because you read at the volume you read at?
[22:01]That's the shocker to me because when I was writing my novels
[22:05]and we were raising family, I didn't read a lot of fiction.
[22:10]I was writing it.
[22:11]So I didn't have time to read it.
[22:15]I enjoy it, you know?
[22:16]Yeah.
[22:17]And I really enjoy your work, right?
[22:20]I enjoy it, which I didn't have the chance to do before, you know?
[22:23]Well, I did really love this book of yours, I have to say.
[22:26]It was really good.
[22:27]It was love that you loved it and I love you
[22:29]and I thank you so much because little tripped Italy,
[22:32]not that I couldn't, why couldn't we always
[22:34]it tripped Italy always always always?
[22:36]When you lead a retreat there, sign me up.
[22:39]I'm gonna come.
[22:40]Okay, baby.
[22:41]You got it.
[22:42]You got it.
[22:43]You got it.
[22:43]Thank you.
[22:44]So excited for you.
[22:45]Nice to be.
[22:46]Okay, thank you.
[22:47]Thank you, bye.
[22:48]I care sweetie, I'll see you soon.
[22:49]You too.
[22:50]Okay.
[22:50]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi
[22:53]formerly mom's don't have time to read books.
[22:56]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[22:59]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[23:02]and spread the word.
[23:03]Thanks so much.
[23:04]Go and buy the books.