Honey

In the diverting latest from Lodato (Edgar and Lucy), a “spritely” 82-year-old woman moves back to the New Jersey town where she was raised by her mob boss father. Ilaria “Honey” Fasinga has spent most of her adult life putting distance between herself and her family, first by attending Bryn Mawr as an art history major and then by working at auction houses in New York and Los Angeles. Now, in retirement, she’s fulfilled a prediction made by her late father more than 60 years earlier: “I know you come back.” Her nephew, Corrado, runs the family’s shadowy business, and while trying to make peace with him, Honey finds herself with a new set of problems—among them, finding out why her troubled grandnephew, Michael, is on the outs with his family; protecting a friendly neighbor, Joss, from her abusive boyfriend; and fending off the romantic advances of a talented and much younger painter, Nathan Flores. By simultaneously acknowledging and denying her age, Honey stands as a rewarding example of always being open to new experiences, and her combination of vulnerability and toughness calls to mind Aunt Augusta, the senior-citizen heroine of Graham Greene’s Travels with My Aunt. Lodato exhibits a gift for excitement in his stimulating tale. Agent: Bill Clegg, United Agents. (Apr.)