Before Ever After

July 25, 2011
In her debut novel, Sotto sets up the intriguing notion that Shelley Gallus's husband, Max, dead for three years, is actually alive and well on an island in the Philippinesâin fact he's been alive for centuries! As Shelley and Paolo (who claims to be Max's grandson) embark on a journey to confront Max about abandoning them, Shelley recounts how she met Max in Europe while he was working as a tour guide for the Slight Detour Company. She and Paulo come to understand that Max's historic tidbits, from 79 A.D. to 1871, involve stories in which he was a major player. While Sotto capably envisions different venues and historic events, it is difficult for readers to make the leap of faith necessary to make this fantastical premise work, especially since Sotto never adequately explains the precise logistics of how Max achieved his immortality. While the various anecdotes about Max's different roles through history are entertainingâincluding that of a wealthy landowner living the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius and a French roué who escaped the ravages of the French Revolutionâthey lack narrative purpose and seem to merely showcase Sotto's knowledge of obscure historic facts and myths. Nevertheless, the author shows a flair for description and offers insight into successful relationships.

August 15, 2011

Though this debut has all the components of a summer treat—romantic European locales, tragedy across the centuries, a supernatural leading man—it fizzles in the telling.

After two years of marriage, young Shelley is widowed when a subway bombing kills Max. Three years later, a young man comes to her London door with unbelievable news: He is Max's grandson Paolo. He has convincing evidence in a series of photos of himself as a child with Max, but as she, Max and Paolo are all about the same age, the truth that Max is very old, in fact, immortal, is inconceivable. Nevertheless, Paolo has found Max running a restaurant on a remote Pacific island, so Shelly and Paolo take the next plane to the Philippines to confront him. On the long ride, Shelly narrates her romance with Max and unravels the truth about his long, long past. On a whim five years ago, Shelly took a quirky tour with Max's company, which offered an unusual perspective on Europe's great capitals. At each out-of-the-way site, Max spun an incredible yarn for his merry little group of travelers: the tale of poor Isabelle during the 19th-century Communard Revolt, the fate of two adventurers at the French Revolution, a ghost story involving a mad mercenary in 16th-century Switzerland, a quiet conversation on aging between an old abbot and a young monk in a 13th-century Austrian monastery and so on, until Max's tour reaches its conclusion at Herculaneum, one of the ancient cities destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, an event that made Max immortal. On the tour Shelly and Max fell in love—it is only in the retelling to Paolo that Shelly realizes these stories were about Max. Surprisingly, following Max through history is rather dull. He is often not the lead player; so much of the novel is composed of vignettes of characters who simply come and go, without the weight of Max (himself a rather shadowy figure) to ground the story.

Sotto's characters are flattened by the crush of history—a flaw that overshadows the cleverness of her conceit.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 15, 2011
Twentysomething Shelley's world is shattered as she hears her husband being blown up while talking to him on the phone. Three years later, she's made little progress in getting beyond her paralyzing grief when she opens the door to a man who looks so much like her husband, Max, that she faints. Paolo's story is so utterly improbable—Max was his grandfather who never aged—that she can barely keep it together. The two grieving survivors head to Europe to retrace the offbeat continental tour that Max led five years before. As they slowly unravel the mystery of Max's immortality and multiple reincarnations, Shelley and Paolo seem to be getting closer to finding the latest version of Max. VERDICTWhen a wildly romantic love story opens with a terrorist attack (based on the March 2004 bombing of the Atocha train station in Madrid) that claims one of the principals, readers are forewarned that hearts will be broken. First-time author Sotto's lush literary gifts draw one in to the terrible beauty of her tale of immortality—is it too much to hope for one purely happy ending?—Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.