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Book Reviews
Oh, those ancient Sicilian villages.
Oh, those fragrant family feasts.
Oh, the way Italians greet their long-lost relatives from the U.S....
Gilda Morina Syverson makes me wish I were Italian.... [She] tells a good story—the joy of watching her parents as they visit the old villages—and she may be one of the most obsessively self-reflective writers I’ve ever read. No surprise that Syverson and her dad come to know each other in a new and more loving way.... I applaud Syverson for opening her heart wide to the reader and saying, Entrate! Entrate!Dannye Romine Powell - Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News & Observer
Thanks to a note from Susan Walker, a fellow Antiquity resident, Around Davidson learned of Gilda’s many talents, not the least of which is her newly published memoir, My Father’s Daughter: From Rome to Sicily, published by Divine Phoenix in conjunction with Pegasus Books. Gilda’s story was a Novello Literary Award Finalist and for the first 5 weeks after its release in December of 2014, it was on Amazon’s No. 1 Hot Best Releases for Sicily Tour Guides.
Brenda Barger - Around Davidson, Davidsonnews.net
To read this book is to know that the places we’ve lived, the places we’ve known, the places and people we come from stick with us in ways we don’t always understand. [Syverson's] work is the stuff of houses and homes and the fixtures they contain, a mapping of experience and how we share it, a way of, as Syverson herself has put it in her poetry, "seeking our own kind" from wherever we happen to be. (From Introduction at Southern Recitations.)
Bryce Emley - Raleigh Review
Syverson’s latest creative work, a Novello Literary Award Finalist, is her book, My Father’s Daughter, From Rome to Sicily. The idea for the book started when Syverson and her husband traveled with her elderly parents to Italy. "I never imagined in a million years I’d go there," she said …"When I came back from Italy, all that was on my mind was the trip. I went to a writer’s group, brought in essays and poems I’d written, and all I could think about was I had to get this story down...."
Lisa Daidone - Charlotte Observer