Julia DeRosa feels lost. After a divorce that leaves her irritable, reeling, and forced to move back into her childhood home in Astoria, Queens, she doesn’t know how to get on with her life. She’s intent on pushing her friends and remaining family away, except for her granddaughter Bella—whom she adores. After dealing with her abusive dad and getting into a car crash that killed her family, she was raised by her grandma and maternal relatives—making for an unstable childhood. Julia’s daughter Andrea pushes her to finally see a therapist to unpack her trauma. Andrea’s daughter Bella buys her an ancestry kit for Christmas to get her mind off things, help her learn about her family tree, and start a social life.
On Long Island, we meet Samuel Testa, who recently lost his beloved wife Angie and is having issues adjusting to this new normal alone, despite his kids urging him to move in with them. He and Julia orbit around each other through mutual acquaintances and family, but timing never seems to work for a real conversation. That is, until Julia discovers a huge secret about her family tree that shakes her entire world, and no one but Sam can help her through it.
Even though Julia and Sam don’t have many interactions in the first half of the novel, the invisible strings between them spark their chemistry from the first encounter. Both are struggling to move on from their relationships despite their loved ones urging them to, and their shared experiences help them understand each other better than anyone else can.
Told in third person with quick chapters, Ava Zacardi’s ALWAYS JULIA: The Art of a Life mainly views the world through Sam and Julia’s experiences. However, a lot of characters in their circle get introduced too, which leads to sporadic changes in perspective without preamble. The omniscient point of view is a little disorienting when characters with barely any presence get their own space. Sam’s longtime but estranged friend Pete makes a sudden appearance, and while his and his family’s presence is more important than we initially realize, the abrupt way they both seem to pick up where they left off years ago doesn’t feel organic to the story. Before readers can fully understand their friendship, they go from seeing each other for the first time in 20 years to Pete taking Sam back to Florida with him for a quick getaway.
Similarly, we hear about Julia’s divorce and her love life in bits and pieces, but there isn’t enough context to understand Julia as an adult, why her previous relationships were so hard on her, what happened to Andrea’s father, and, in turn, how they soured Julia’s relationship with Andrea. The healing journey would have been more rewarding had readers understood Julia’s present life instead of just her childhood.
Ultimately, however, the story gets back on track as the endearing community around the two helps drive the story forward when Julia and Sam seem to stagnate in their current situations. Even reading Bella’s perspective further immerses readers into the story, as she tries to bring normalcy back to her grandmother’s life and connect with her own parents amidst their family secrets coming to light. Bella’s insistence on the ancestry kit sets off a chain reaction and builds anticipation as readers wait with bated breath to learn what happens.
Through all these changes, Zacardi explores how life moves on with or without our involvement, and how important it is to reclaim it instead of letting it pass by. She shows Julia trying to move on from the ghosts of her past and move forward with the family who is alive. Zacardi also delicately maps the journey of Sam trying to overcome his guilt for living without Angie. “It strikes him that he has been living this past year as a spectator of his own life,” he reflects at one point. It’s fascinating to watch Julia and Sam’s lives diverge and merge before finding a kinship in one another when they most need it. One tries to fight off the ghosts of her past; the other tries not to become one.
Ava Zacardi’s ALWAYS JULIA: The Art of a Life is a wholesome and emotional story about how it’s never too late to find closure and love, and that it’s important to take chances before life passes you by.
~K. Nesa for IndieReader