While traveling in Italy in 1980, the twenty-two-year-old eldest daughter of the Woodhull family is killed in a terrorist attack. Her parents live in rural Illinois. Her father,“Woody” Woodhull, is a college professor whose life goes off the rails in the aftermath of the tragedy. Her mother has a breakdown and joins a convent. The book is told in alternating perspectives of Woody and middle daughter, Sarah.

I liked the writing style and Sarah’s chapters. The narrative related to a family divided by grief is heartbreaking. Woody’s chapters are too disturbing for my taste (horrific injuries from a terrorist attack, an affair between a professor and student, and many graphic sex scenes). I have enjoyed other novels by this author, but this one is not for me.

hardly enjoyed this lol but the writing was so good

I loved this book b/c it ties you to different geographic places. not just Italy and the American Midwest. It is about music, bats, love and feelings between children and their parents. Who has the harder time letting go - the child or the parent?

For me to rate something this low is really saying something. I was very excited about this book but it definitely disappointed. You may not want to risk the disappointment.

I wanted to give this book 4 stars but it just didn’t grab me the way I wanted it to. It’s a beautifully crafted book about loss and forgiveness. But I kept losing interest in the characters.

I loved this book!

I have ambivalent feelings about this novel. On the one hand Hellenga is a gifted and imaginative writer. His storytelling skills are excellent. And yet I wasn't taken by any of they story's characters. In fact some behaved in that I would not have approved of had I been in the family. I admit that I have never experienced the loss of a young family member to violence and we might wonder what it is like for those who have. It's also true that stories need conflict, and some of these characters are very conflicted. There is personal growth, but it comes at more than the cost of one life.

This book was very interesting. I love anything about Italy, so I loved it. But there were distinct characteristics that screamed that this was written by a man. I've never read anything where the author's gender screamed itself so obviously. The ending... Very man. I'm still thinking of the various analogies that this ending might be implying.
Overall, I loved the dose of Italian and the shot of testosterone this book delivered. I could leave the academic snobbery that continually revealed itself in Part I, but by Part II it was much more muted.

Beyond the author's skillful use of language and the color of Italy, the love Woody feels for his daughters is refreshing. His reawakening to the basic pleasures of his life, namely his music, desires, and cooking, pave the path for his rebirth to a new and fulfilling life. I read this book slowly, taking the time to visualize both the settings and the emotions. One of my favorite books.

This novel was quite a disappointment after the brilliant read that was Mr. Hellenga's first book, The Sixteen Pleasures. Hot mess train wreck is the best description for this novel which was all over the place. The sex scenes read like a creepy old man's fantasies, and one interaction between the protagonist and his dead daughter was absolutely revolting. The characters weren't at all likable. I know many authors swear they don't write themselves and/or their opinions into their books, but the fact that it's his/her creation makes me incredibly skeptical. I say this because I suspect the author has an issue with religion, specifically Christianity represented by Catholicism, as evidenced by the subtle slams against it and a few against Jews as well. Muslims, on the other hand, were well-represented in this novel. The story and the characters came across as incredibly Godless. Overall, The Fall of a Sparrow was a chore to read.

There is much to love about this book, Hellenga is a beautiful writer. His descriptions of Italy are lovely and his basic story was compelling. The problem for me was I never did warm up to the main character, Woody. He seemed like a self-indulgent, self-centered guy who was more interested in his wants and needs than in the lives of the people he encountered, especially his daughters.

I loved Hellenga's "The Sixteen Pleasures" and some of that magic lingered in the second half of the book but the story was a bit too rambling and Woody was to self-absorbed to make it as memorable as his previous book.

This book is divided into two sections. One section takes place mostly in the small college town in Illinois where Woody is a college professor whose eldest daughter is killed in a terrorist attack in Italy in 1980. The book is set in the late 1980s and Woody's wife has left him to join a convent, his younger two daughters are growing up, and he's still trying to deal with his daughter's death. The second part of the book has Woody move to Italy to follow the trial of the terrorists.
I really enjoyed the first part of the book. It was less centered on the terrorists and his deceased daughter, and more on the two living daughters and how their family has changed and how Woody adapts. I was prepared to give the book five stars after the first half.
The second half was still good, but it wasn't great, like the first half. The change of scenery was interesting, and the characters in Italy had good stories, but it just lost some of its luster. Still a great book, and still worth reading. It just didn't maintain greatness, like a previous book of his that I read called Philosophy Made Simple.