Rococo by Adriana Trigiani
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To put it simply, I liked this book. It had moments of tension, humor, disappointment, and straight up interior design heaven. Here and there the design descriptions were just a little too much, a little boring, but not enough to deter me from listening and not enough to make me skip forward. The characters were wonderfully varied while still being within the stereotypical Italian personalities. The time period (1970) was easy to identify even without the author stating it. There were some unusual perspectives that I really appreciated and felt Trigliani did a great job bringing out in ways that enabled the reader to see both sides of the POV clearly and understand them both whether in agreement or disagreement. Some narrative monologues were a bit too long and there were some bits of repetition that I also didn’t think were necessary. Again, this didn’t hurt the enjoyment of the book enough for me to take it down two stars, just one.
I listened to the audio version of Rococo, and I enjoyed it at least three times as much as I would have just reading it myself. The voice talent was Mario Cantone, who I hadn’t heard on an audio book before. It’s very rare I listen to a book and feel as if I’m watching a movie because the voice talent is so fantastic, but this was one of those cases. The only other time that’s ever happened was with Wodehouse’s Jeeves series. I can say that I’m listening to another of Trigliani’s books and I’m not enjoying it half as much because Cantone isn’t reading it. I hope I come across him many more times in the future!
In short, I would recommend this physical book or audio book to anyone – seriously, anyone.

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