Italian American Reconciliation - a Comic Folktale

Huey Maximilian Bonfigliano has a problem - while he is safely divorced from his shrewish first wife, Janice, who shot his dog and even took a bead on him, he feels he cannot regain his "manhood" until he woos and wins her one more time - if only to put his broken marriage behind him once and for all. He enlists the aid of his lifelong buddy, Aldo Scalicki, a confirmed bachelor who tries, without apparent success, to convince Huey that he would be better off sticking with his new lady friend, Teresa, a usually placid young waitress whose indignation flares when she learns what Huey is up to. "He writes wonderful Runyonesque dialogue--a sort of gritty, downtown version of sparkling drawing-room comedy--and highly rhetorical speeches that are fun to hear, because actors love to perform them" - The New Yorker