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Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite
"Hard Living Easy" is a perfectly written, believable love story. It is not chick-lit or one of those sexy covered romances of yore. Lorenzo and Lilly are the star-crossed lovers, and their story is set primarily against the beatnik background of the 1950's. Lorenzo is a gifted young man who also gives off a tough guy image to protect his impassioned, uncompromising work as an artist. Lilly comes from a conventional background, living with her older sister, Beatrice, a devotedly religious nurse. Lilly and Lorenzo love each other passionately but their personalities and their personal worlds keep them apart.
Author Caruso has crafted a story that will appeal to many readers, bringing authentic encounters with Jackson Pollack, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs into Lorenzo and Lilly's story. The author has a true gift for storytelling as he opens "Hard Living Easy" with Lorenzo as an old man, failing in health, and ends the novel with long dead Lilly welcoming Lorenzo into her world as he dies, all this, and without sentimental sloppiness.
The storyline is consistent, characters are well-delineated consistently, and the dialogue between those characters is believable throughout the book.
