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A well-off Italian teenager learns the difference between the haves and have-nots when she is dropped at the crowded apartment of the birth family she didn’t know existed.
— The Washington Post, Nov 21 2019

"A gripping, deeply moving coming-of-age novel; immensely readable, beautifully written, and highly recommended." In this slim novel by award-winning Italian author Di Pietrantonio, her first translated into English, a 13-year-old girl raised by distant relatives as their...
— Kirkus Review, Nov 13 2019
A Girl Returned is a thought provoking and sensitive book. It is also beautifully translated by Ann Goldstein (Elena Ferrante’s translator…). A 13 year old (nameless) girl is suddenly uprooted from her house and family on the coast and transported to a poor village...
— Trip Fiction, Nov 12 2019
This translation of an Italian award-winning novel follows the life a 13-year-old girl who, without warning or explanation, is sent away from the family she believed was hers to live with her birth family — a large, chaotic assortment of individuals who seem anything but welcoming.
— Well and Tribune, Oct 9 2019
If you loved the Elena Ferrante trilogy, you won’t want to miss A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio. I loved this story from the point of view of our unnamed heroine as she arrives at her birthparent’s front door, accompanied by the man she had previously thought...
— Lit Picks, Sep 12 2019
Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s novel, A Girl, Returned is a heartwarming delight. Given the premise, this is a surprise. The girl, unceremoniously returned to her birth family at the age of 13, is never named. But she is the narrator, and she faces an uphill struggle. Cast off...
— Lizzy's Literary Life, Aug 19 2019
This vivid novel begins with the narrator’s recollection of being returned to her birth mother, after learning that the woman who raised her is in fact a distant aunt. Nicknamed “arminuta”, “the one who was returned”, the narrator feels not so much returned as doubly...
— The Guardian, Aug 17 2019
“… for anyone suffering withdrawal symptoms after finishing the [Elena Ferrante] saga.”
— The Sunday Times, Aug 11 2019
Di Pietrantonio writes with deceptive simplicity. Every scene — every detail — is as meticulously rendered as a grain of sand. There is no sentimentality here, no excess at all, but delicacy of feeling, and depth.
— StarTribune, Aug 2 2019
It is 1975, somewhere in the south of Italy. A thirteen year old girl drags a suitcase and a bag of shoes up the stairs of a tenement building in an unknown town. She is about to meet – and live with – people she has never met before. The girl telling her painful story is...
— Shiny New Books, Jul 30 2019
In A Girl Returned, Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s award-winning novel, a nameless young woman retrospectively narrates the defining event of her adolescence—the year when the only family she has ever known returns her to her birth family. From the title, the reader can already...
— Asymptote, Jul 15 2019
The unnamed narrator is 13, raised by two affectionate parents in a comfortable city home where she has her own room. School, swim and dance lessons, a nearby best friend, the sea a short walk away are the life she's known. And then, one August afternoon in 1975, she's driven...
— Shelf Awareness, Jul 15 2019
“I was a child of separations, false or unspoken kinships, distances,” says Arminuta (the “girl returned”) in Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s novel, her first published in English. Returned by the mother who raised her to the mother she didn’t know conceived her, Arminuta...
— NewStateman, Jul 3 2019
“A captivating tale about the trials of settling down, fitting in and battling on amid emotional upheaval.” “I was the arminuta, the one who was returned.” So says the narrator of Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s third novel (entitled “L’Arminuta” in Italy),...
— The Economist, Jun 27 2019
Di Pietrantonio [has a] lively way with a phrase (the translator, Ann Goldstein, shows the same sensitivity she does with Elena Ferrante) [and] a fine instinct for detail.
— The Washington Post, Jun 13 2019
"Goldstein’s translation flows smoothly, giving American readers a glimpse of a different time and place. Di Pietrantonio’s story has the feel of a memoir as much as literary fiction; it perfectly captures an unusual situation in one girl’s life.”
— Publishers Weekly, Jun 4 2019
”A gripping, deeply moving coming-of-age novel; immensely readable, beautifully written, and highly recommended.”
— Kirkus Review, May 12 2019

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