elisa_rolle (elisa_rolle) wrote,
elisa_rolle
elisa_rolle

An Impossible Dream Story by J.V. Petretta

The author of this book contacted me after my review of The Perfect Family by Kathryn Shay; aside for the fact that he knew the author of that book, I think he wanted someone who was able to understand Vinny Pirelli and the strength he derived from the faith. Faith is very important for Vinny, as it was for the father of The Perfect Family of above; that father almost disowned his own son since he was gay, but in the end, he understood that being catholic and loving your son weren’t opposite things, he also understood that loving God is above the church, and sometime it’s the church that put a barrier between you and that God. In any case, like in that other novel, religion comes out a winner from this novel, but it’s a religion based on love, not on the archaic structures of the catholic church.

Vinny had not an easy life but he was always able to see a light at the end of the tunnel. He is also someone able of infinite love, for many different people; Vinny is gay, but he married, Lek, a thai girl he manages to bring in the US, she and later her son, and with Lek Vinny had other children; the children are everything for Vinny, the children and his family, plus the enlarged family he builds made of friends, lovers and fellow army officers. The most hurtful episodes in his life are due to his troubled relationship with his family; but despite that, despite the many betrayals, Vinny is always ready to extend that family, he is always ready to include someone else in that family, to let a new member near his heart… so near that it will be easy to hurt him again.

During the length of this novel, you wonder how many other challenges Vinny will be able to overcome; is it really possible that all of that is happening to one man? But then you also realize that probably the novel is pretty much a memoir, and that probably more than half of what is happening to Vinny Pirelly is also the life experience of J.V. Petretta.

From the little bio info we have of the author for sure he shares three things in common with Vinny: the love for God, the love for his bicycle and the love for all God’s creatures. Vinny will put together those things and realize his Impossible Dream Story, to bike for 5.000 miles across the country to raise money for an AIDS charity. He will do that as a volunteer, but also as someone who is living the death sentence that was AIDS at the beginning of the ’90. The story will end in 1996, so we don’t know what happened to Vinny, but we know that in 2011 J.V. Petretta, at retirement age, had indeed realized the same dream as Vinny and his now dreaming other Impossible Dream Stories, because you should never stop to find a way to help your neighbour. That is basically the reason why Vinny didn’t succumb to AIDS and why, in the end, God granted him one of his many dreams, because instead of pitying his own fate, Vinny decided to help other people, with the little he had, with what he was able and love to do, biking and loving.

Amazon: An Impossible Dream Story
Amazon Kindle: An Impossible Dream Story
Paperback: 260 pages
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing, LLC (October 11, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1457506807
ISBN-13: 978-1457506802

Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle
Tags: author: j.v. petretta, genre: contemporary, length: novel, review
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