Personality [Paperback]

Growing up on the Scottish Isle of Bute, Maria Tambini is a young girl with dreams of escape from her Italian immigrant family. When her amazing singing voice wins her a talent show at the tender age of thirteen, she is whisked off to London and instant stardom.

But even as Maria is celebrating her greatest success, she is waging a hidden battle against her own body, and becoming in the process a living exhibit in the modern drama of celebrity. Can she be saved by love? Or will she be consumed by an obsessive celebrity culture, family lies, and by her number-one fan?

This stunning novel is a rich portrait of an immigrant community and a tragic tale of the hidden costs of celebrity.

PRAISE FOR PERSONALITY
“The book is so bustling and rich . . . that the darkness seems lit from
end to end.”—THE NEW YORKER
“A remarkable and profoundly moving meditation on the joys and
sorrows of the immigrant experience, the corrosive nature of show
business, grief’s burdens and the transformative nature of love.”
—SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Business was slack, so the pubs closed early and the ferry came in for the night. A brown suitcase was left standing on the pier; it stood there for hours and nobody came for it and nobody complained. It was out all night, and in the morning somebody took it along to Lost Property.

The sky was pink above the school and at eight o'clock the high tide arrived and later the promenade was quiet except for the barking of a dog. From out in the bay you could see lights coming on in the windows of Rothesay, the main town on the Isle of Bute. Inside the rooms there were shadows moving and the shadows were blue from the televisions. It had been a rough winter. First the swimming baths were closed down and then a fire destroyed the railway station at Wemyss Bay. In January, the winds got up to seventy miles per hour, interrupting ferry services to tlãn