Lesser Islands

Six translators deliver an uneven family saga from Pieri (The Garden of Monsters). During summers on the tiny Italian island of Giglio, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the parents of narrator Teresa are preoccupied with managing their hotel, so Teresa spends most of her time with her bright but bratty older sister, Caterina. In 1976,when they’re young girls, their mother, Elena, coordinates protests against the government’s exile of two neofascists charged with a bombing in Milan to the island, efforts that only succeed temporarily. Six years later, Caterina goes to boarding school in Florence, and Teresa picks up on their parents’ increasingly strained marriage. During the summer, the sisters recapture a degree of their childhood closeness, but their father’s infidelity brings new ruptures to the family. In the final sections, set from the late 1990s through 2012, when the cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground, Teresa deals with unexpected changes in her life and surprises herself by embracing her family members’ devotion to hospitality. The time jumps feel disjointed, and the thread involving the accused bombers is a bit convoluted, though Pieri has a sure hand in conveying Teresa’s adolescent unease and curiosity. Pieri’s island novel is a bit like island hopping, in that some stops are more rewarding than others. (Feb.)