Valeria's Last Stand
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Don't miss Marc Fitten's newest book, Elza's Kitchen, available in July, 2012.
When it comes to the sizes of fishes and ponds, Valeria is a whale in a thimble. She harrumphs her daily way through her backwater Hungarian village, finding equal fault with the new, the old, the foreign and the familiar. Her decades of universal contempt have turned her into a touchstone of her little community - whatever she scorns the least must be the best, after all. But, on a day like any other, her spinster's heart is struck by an unlikely arrow: the village potter, long-known and little-noticed, captures her fancy, and Valeria finds herself suddenly cast in a new role she never expected to play. This one deviation from character, this one loose thread, is all it takes for the delicately woven fabric of village life to unravel. And, for the first time in a long time, Valeria couldn't care less.
Valeria's Last Stand is a joyfully wise small-town satire that takes an hilariously honest look at later-in-life romance and the notion that it's never too late to start anew.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Life in an isolated Hungarian village is turned upside down by an unusual love affair in Fitten's promising debut. In the small hamlet of Zivatar, 68-year-old Valeria is known by all as a cantankerous woman, quick to criticize everything from the produce at the market to the mayor's lofty ambitions to lure foreign investors to the town. But a chance encounter one day with the elderly local potter a man Valeria has known for years but never noticed changes everything. The widower potter falls just as hard for Valeria, despite his relationship with Ibolya, the owner of the village's only tavern. Unaccustomed to being smitten, Valeria tries to maintain her normal routine, but the village is in an uproar over this unlikely love triangle. The arrival of a traveling chimney sweep intent on bilking the townspeople sends another ripple through what was once a placid village. Fitten is not always successful in balancing character development with the larger themes of power and progress, but the irascible Valeria makes such a unique heroine that readers may be willing to overlook the story's less fluid elements.
