When Kit Kat is adopted by the middle-aged, childless Anna, what Kit Kat wants most, apart from love, is an identity...her own, including her sad past as the abandoned, unwanted Elektra, daughter of a Greek prostitute. But while Anna looks after all Kit Kat’s physical...

The Virgin Chronicles is an engaging memoir by Marina DelVecchio about a young woman’s complex relationship with her adoptive mother, Ann. Kathy is used to her mother calling her “putana,” a Greek word with two meanings; a dirty word for the vagina and whore. Little...