Ms. Hen reviews Household Saints

Ms. Hen, a Christmas hen

Household Saints

Francine Prose

G.K. Hall

1981

Ms. Hen happened to pick up this book a couple of weeks ago at the Little Free Library in front of the Walgreens in Downtown Boston. She usually is able to unearth one good book when she is there. Some people might be offended that the location of the former Borders Bookstore is now a Walgreens, but Ms. Hen is a forgiving hen. This particular Walgreens has a liquor department, which Ms. Hen finds convenient and inexpensive.

She picked this book for the simple reason that she had heard of the author. She didn’t remember anything about her, just her name. She is so glad she did! Ms. Hen adored this book.

This novel is about an Italian family in Little Italy in New York around the 1950s. Joseph Santangelo wins his wife Catherine in a card game that he plays with her father. Catherine is unaware for a long time that her father gambled her away for a breath of cold air from the walk-in refrigerator in the butcher shop on a hot summer’s day. When she finds out, it’s almost a joke. They marry and are happy, but have hard times.

In the beginning the couple live with his mother in their apartment above the butcher shop. Catherine loves the way Joseph smells like meat when he goes to bed with her when they first get married, which Ms. Hen thinks is visceral. Ms. Hen is not a meat eater, but she could understand why someone would love that smell.

Mrs. Santangelo is superstitions in the ways of the old country. She believes Catherine loses her baby because she saw a turkey being slaughtered while she was pregnant. Mrs. Santangelo dies and after that, the couple live alone. When Catherine becomes pregnant again, she wants science to rule her life, not superstition. She reads medical books and does not tell anyone in the neighborhood she is pregnant. She gives birth to a healthy girl, but the girl grows up to be a strangely religious as her grandmother had been, to the dismay of her parents.

This novel has a tinge of magical realism, even though it is based in real life, fantasy is thrown in, or the hint of fantasy. This novel reminded Ms. Hen of the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the way that magic can be hidden in ordinary life, and part of the mystery is whether it actually is magic.

Ms. Hen loved this book because she thinks the characters are realistic; they could be anyone that she has known in her life. Ms, Hen is not an Italian hen, but she grew up in an area where there are lot of Italians, so the characters in the neighborhood in this novel could have been her neighbors or classmates.

Since the book is about a butcher’s family, there are enough mentions of chickens to satisfy Ms. Hen. One particular passage Ms. Hen enjoyed was, “Crying, he turned away, but not before the thought had crossed his mind that the infant resembled nothing so much as a plucked and freshly slaughtered baby chicken.” Ms. Hen thought this was depressing and morbid, because Mrs. Santangleo predicted that Catherine would give birth to a chicken and the baby would be born dead. Ms. Hen doesn’t like when chickens in novels and stories are a source of sadness, but sometimes it’s inevitable, because sadness is part of life.

This is one of two novels Ms. Hen has read recently where she found herself in tears at the end. She thinks the ending of this novel is so beautiful and profound that it makes her almost believe in magic and saints. Ms. Hen is not a superstitious hen, but she would like to believe in something other than what's on the surface. She would like to believe in saints, even everyday household saints, like Theresa. It’s comforting to know that there could be an unseen power, especially during the darkest days of the year, like right now, which is supposed to be a time of celebration.