| Valeria's Last Stand | |
| by Marc Fitten |
From 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. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Selected Media Reviews:
"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." - Publishers Weekly
"Enjoyable and poignant, this work is recommended." - Library Journal
"Fitten populates his fairy tale of a novel with bitter-coated sugarplums of characters; they will definitely win a place in your heart, even as they’d never stoop to asking for one. In a Hungarian village so small as to be nearly outside of history—the Germans, the Soviets, the capitalists, no one bothers to stop in this hamlet—these sprites still manage to cheat, love, hate, drink, and make pottery for one another with a level of passion we’re more accustomed to associating with the very engines of expanding or decaying empires. A beautiful debut." - Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
"A thoughtful, skillfully drawn portrait of one woman, one village, and one country." - Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook
"Marc Fitten’s excellent new novel has much to recommend it—wisdom, warmth, humor—but it is his creation of the title character herself that is his and the novel’s most remarkable achievement. Valeria is every bit as sensual and irrepressible as Chaucer's Wife of Bath, and she will linger in any reader’s mind long after the last page is turned." - Ron Rash, author of Serena
