At the Copa

With humour and poignancy, Marisa Labozzetta's stories expose the social and sexual turmoil of men and women in the time as she puts it 'the old age of youth.' In 'The Knife Lady,' a seemingly happily married suburbanite receives a jolt of sexual panic with the visit of a woman selling knives. In 'At the Copa,' an Italian American mother's legacy traps a daughter in her quest for sexual satisfaction and then, paradoxically, frees her. In 'The Tooth Healer,' a restless Jewish dentist on a visit to a bizarre charlatan discovers an unlikely cure to what's ailing him. And in 'After Victory' a star-crossed World War II couple meets again after fifty years with stunning results. Long recognised as one of the most talented chroniclers of Italian American experience -- the critic Kenneth Scambray called her novel 'Stay with Me, Lella', among the most forceful pieces of fiction written by an Italian American writer in decades -- Labozzetta here expands her range to prove herself a keen observer of the whole range of American experience.