Lives of the Saints

Nino Ricci’s 1990 novel Lives of the Saints is the acclaimed first book of a trilogy about the life of Vittorio Innocente, a boy who immigrates to Canada from Italy. In this trilogy, Ricci, himself a first generation Canadian of Italian descent, melds together three genres: the coming-of-age story, the loss of innocence narrative, and the experience of leaving one country for another. Set in rural Italy in the late 1950s-early 1960s, Lives of the Saints chronicles oppressive and tradition-bound village life. Through Vittorio’s not entirely understanding eyes, we experience the harsh treatment villagers mete out to anyone who goes against their long held beliefs and superstitions – in this case, Vittorio’s mother Christina.

When the novel opens, Vittorio is seven years old and lives in the village of Valle del Sole with his mother Christina in the house of his disabled grandfather. Four years earlier, Vittorio’s abusive and violent father Mario left Italy for Canada in order to earn more money for the family. Because Christina refused to go with him, she has been looked at disapprovingly by the other villagers who are made deeply uncomfortable by anyone doing anything out of the norm. Even the grandfather, since he is also the village mayor, sides with the townspeople’s opinion of his daughter.

One day, when Vittorio is looking for his mother, he finds her doing something confusing with a blue-eyed man in the stable. To the reader, it is clear that Christina is having an affair with a German soldier who must have deserted during WWII, but Vittorio doesn’t really understand what he has witnessed. In any case, during her encounter, Christina is bitten by a snake and ends up in the hospital.



The villagers learn about the affair, and more importantly, the snakebite. To them, the bite is a clear sign of the evil eye – an omen that Christina has been cursed for her behavior and her unwillingness to conform. Superstitiously worried that associating with her will contaminate them, her neighbors advise her to undo the curse by either confessing her sins in church or doing a complicated chicken sacrifice. When Christina not only refuses to do this, but goes so far as to deny that the evil eye is a real thing, the villagers completely shun her.

Soon, it is clear that Christina is pregnant with the blue-eyed man’s child, and the villagers begin to openly mock not only her but also the rest for of the Innocente family (since clearly, despite their last name, Christina is not so very “innocent” after all). Villagers don’t simply focus on Christina’s sexuality, but bring to the surface resentments about the family’s relative wealth, and about Christina’s decision to educate Vittorio, who has been kept in school instead of being taken out at an early age to start farming. Christina’s father grows more and more distant from his daughter, more beholden to keeping his status in the village by observing its mores and customs than to defending her independence.

Vittorio social standing is part of the collateral damage of his mother’s actions as he is left almost friendless. The only boy he is close to, Fabrizio, lords over Vittorio the vast knowledge he claims comes with being one year older – although of course the reader sees Fabrizio’s “knowledge” for the imagination of an eight year old. When Vittorio tries to get in with a group of village boys by undergoing a kind of hazing initiation, Fabrizio doesn’t understand and tries to defend Vittorio from the group’s violence. Vittorio takes this as betrayal – the gang doesn’t let him in after all, and his friendship with Fabrizio also ends.



Now the only person who treats Vittorio kindly is his teacher, who gives him a copy of the book The Lives of the Saints, which for her allows for the possibility of putting a new perspective on the world. In particular, the teacher points out the fate of Saint Christina, who staunchly stuck to her own beliefs in the face of public condemnation and even torture imposed by her own father.

Finally, to escape the village, Christina decides to take Vittorio and immigrate to Canada to be with Mario. Christina gives birth in the middle of the voyage to Vittorio’s half-sister Rita, and then dies in childbirth. Rita’s blue eyes will be an ongoing reminder of the affair. After they land in Canada, the blue-eyed man comes to see the children in their infirmary where they are checked for suitability to enter Canada. This reveals that Christina’s actual plan was to reunite with the blue-eyed man and not Vittorio’s father. The novel ends after her funeral, when the two children join Mario.

This novel was a critical success on publication, winning the LA Times Book Prize and the Canadian Governor General's Award for Fiction. As a whole, the trilogy, which describes Vittorio’s difficult acclimation to life in Toronto, and then his search for his mother’s story and Rita’s father, have been critically acclaimed. As Barbara Grizzuti Harrison put it in her New York Times Book Review article, “Ricci has perfect pitch and brilliant descriptive powers.”