Bookworm, Issue 5

The Book: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

In the novel Hello Beautiful author Ann Napolitano calls upon us to reflect on whom and how we love. The story’s protagonists, the four Padavano sisters, Julia, Sylvie, Cecelia and Emeline, are inseparable as they come of age until a rift tears them apart. As Napolitano crafts her narrative, she explores love’s boundaries – at its best nurturing and enriching, but when withheld or conditional, isolating and harming. As readers, we can’t help but consider our own closest relationships, asking ourselves whether we love wholeheartedly, with acceptance, or with strings attached.

A story about loving people as they are, and not for whom we want them to be, pairs perfectly with a natural wine. Winemakers avoid additives and use “wild” yeasts in search of pure flavors, “warts and all.” It’s a philosophy that involves minimal intervention. Our wine is a Pét-Nat (Pétillance Naturel), which means it’s bottled and sold while still undergoing fermentation, so it’s a “living” wine.

While Hello Beautiful is not a challenging read, nor a stay-up-all-night page turner, it is an engaging story that tackles some thought-provoking topics. The characters experience love and loss, grief and loneliness, pain and depression, uncertainty, the struggle to find oneself and to belong, all while doing the best they can when confronted with difficult circumstances. Within the first 75 pages a lot of things happen quickly to lay the story’s foundation, but to avoid spoiling plot twists I want to focus this review on the complicated topic of love – a source of immense joy and heartbreaking pain for the Padavano sisters.

Charlie Padavano greets each of his four daughters and their mother Rose the same way: “Hello beautiful!,” he says. Sylvie thinks, “The greeting was nice enough to make them want to leave the room and come in all over again.” This book is filled with these anecdotes; a seemingly simple action, or sometimes inaction, that has far-reaching consequences to bolster or to damage relationships. At the center of the Padavano sisters’ split is William Waters. William is estranged from his parents, but when he and Julia begin dating in college, he is readily accepted into the Padavano family. The two marry, and William receives an envelope from his parents. More than anything, he hopes for a letter, but instead it’s a check for $10,000. It is a heartbreaking scene. “He had to breathe in a funny way to keep from crying. He was surprised by how upset he was; it felt like something had broken inside of him.”

So while the story celebrates love, there’s a pervasive sadness woven into the pages, too. In some relationships honesty and acceptance prevail, and the characters “complete” one another. Others hope to avoid heartache by closing themselves off. Rose cuts one of her daughters out of her life, saying, “You girls were supposed to do more than I did…I wanted you to be better. That…was the whole point of my life.” And William believes that he doesn’t deserve love, he doesn’t deserve “this woman in front of him, her hand in his, because she had crossed the room, and she was holding his hand now.” He turns away to protect himself, preferring to feel nothing instead of everything.

Although the novel focuses on relationships, the characters also evolve to love themselves and prioritize their own happiness. When Julia gives birth to a daughter, she realizes, “amazed, I love myself. That had somehow never been true before…Her newfound power was like a wonderful secret.”And Sylvie bravely asks herself, “What do you want?,” knowing the answer will hurt but that she can “be deeply and truly herself.” Even William opens his heart to love and discovers “that life became bigger.”

Napolitano’s novel suggests that where love exists, so too, does beauty and hope and peace. And there’s tremendous power in knowing that we can nurture ourselves and uplift others through loving actions both small and large. Sometimes love hurts, but as Sylvie, Julia and William discover, the reward of finding someone to love who sees all of you outweighs the risks.

The Wine: Il Mostro “Longana” Rosato Frizzante, 2021, Terre di Chieti, $24.99

The wine is medium pink and bubbly with sediment at the bottom of the bottle. It has medium (-) aroma intensity where fresh red fruits, such as cherry, strawberry and raspberry, prevail. Additional aromas include pink grapefruit, lime, honeydew, bruised apple, sea salt, crushed gravel and yeast.

On the palate, the wine is dry with medium alcohol at 12.5% ABV. It is light-bodied with medium (+) acidity and a delicate mousse. Flavors mirror the nose with medium intensity and a medium fruity finish.

It’s fun, refreshing, a little bit funky and delicious. This wine is balanced and complex; there’s a lot to discover among the varied aroma and flavor notes, the bubbles and the sediment (if you get the last glass). Share it with a friend because you’ll be tempted to finish the bottle on your own!

The wine is 100% Montepulciano, and the organic grapes were hand-harvested from a single vineyard in Chieti, Abruzzo, Italy.

A big thank you for this recommendation goes to Vanessa De Courcy at Sips Ensemble. She facilitates WSET blind tasting sessions that I attend, and she’s a wonderful, thoughtful teacher. Vanessa and her husband Michael offer live and virtual wine tasting and learning opportunities. Visit their website to find out more.

Why the pairing works:

This natural wine is made with minimal winemaker intervention, and that is the driving factor behind the pairing. Il Mostro ‘Longana’ is a Pét-Nat (Pétillance Naturel) fermented with wild yeast using the Ancestral Method. The winemaker bottles the wine as it is fermenting. It completes the process on its own trapping carbon dioxide in the bottle creating the bubbles. It’s unfiltered and considered a “living wine.”

While critics argue that natural wines can be unstable and that their sometimes cloudy appearance is a flaw, enthusiasts love the wines for their individuality and lack of added sulfur dioxide.

This wine pairs perfectly with the book because both champion beauty in imperfection. In Hello Beautiful, the strongest relationships are those in which love is unconditional. For example, when William eventually experiences love that allows him to “just be,” he feels at peace. He no longer needs to pretend to be someone he is not. In natural winemaking, winemakers embrace limited intervention and purity of flavor. They don’t want to change the character of the grapes, but instead seek pure fruit expression and a tasting experience that cannot be replicated.

Embracing the unexpected, in life (and wine), makes way for wonder and poetry.

This wine is produced in Italy, and the Padavano sisters are Italian-Americans living in Chicago’s ethnic, working-class Pilsen neighborhood. It’s a novel about love, which triumphs in the end, and so this wine with its bright, fruity character and bubbles helps us celebrate love overcoming heartbreak.