Michelle Herbert reviews The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames…
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna follows the life of Stella Fortuna and her family through years of near-death experiences, happiness, sadness and not being able to reach your full potential. This is a book about family and hard times, what people will do to survive and how they fight to get what they need, and how sometimes the sacrifices they make are overlooked by others.
Stella is the second Stella, as her namesake died at the age of three, although this doesn’t mean that Stella is overshadowed by the original Stella. The book is told as several personal stories that recount the incidents that lead to the many deaths of Stella. The book starts in rural Italy before World War II. Stella’s family life is hard, but they are free to live life the way they want to. There are a number of superstitions around Stella and how she may be cursed. I don’t want to list the ways that she escapes death, or what happens as that would ruin the book, but each story has a hint of what could either be human negligence or supernatural hindrance.
Stella wants more out of life, she doesn’t want to get married and have babies like the other girls in her village. With the return of her father, she feels more and more threatened and removed from the life she had before his return. When her father forces her family to leave everything they know to come to America and live as a family, everything changes for Stella, her mother and sister, as there are more rules, less freedom and a language that she will need to learn if she wants to get ahead which is a massive culture shock for them all.
The saddest part of this story is how realistic it is. There is a lot left unsaid between what people say to each other and what they want. It shows realism in how women speak to each other about their wants and needs, as well as how women are taught over and over again, that what they want is to get married and have kids, leading women to become tamed and no longer rebellious. Even if that isn’t what they want, as if they don’t want marriage or children then there must be something wrong with them.
This is a story that shows how fear of sex can be passed down amongst generations. From what Stella learns from her mother as a child, which makes her fearful of marriage, sex and childbirth, as well as the way it is described in the story. Stella has every reason to fear it, there is no one to give her a talk on sex-positivity. Throughout the novel, there is a lot of tradition vs. modernity and how a lack of freedom and other peoples expectations can ruin lives.
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is truly a heartbreaking story, it is slightly reminiscent of One Hundred Years of Solitude but set in the sadness and upheavals of the twentieth century. The novel has lots of angles and twists during the decades this story is set over. It has a great mix of themes such as sisterly love being torn apart, family betrayal, the stress of childbirth and the lies that tell you that everyone knows what is best for you, rather than what your feelings tell you. This leads to unhappiness that runs through generations. A compelling if not easy read at times.
Michelle Herbert
