I didn’t go to a K-12 parochial school taught by nuns who gave me nightmares.
I graduated high school in 2000, not 1968. And I’m not Italian. But adolescence is universal.
Which makes Marianne Leone’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age-novel “Christina the Astonishing” so relatable.
“Did you go to Catholic school? Did you relate to Christina?” Leone asks when I call her at her Kingston home recently.
Honestly, those are two separate ideas. Like Christina, I was the kid playing Bob Dylan in my room, living inside books, wanting to be Joan Baez, idolizing eccentrics, feeling no one understood me.
Maybe that was you, too. It was a heck of a lot of us.
In her new novel, we meet Leone’s protagonist, Christina Falcone, in her wonder years and follow her to UMass and young adulthood. Like Leone, Christina lives outside Boston, her mother is from Italy, she attends a parochial school in the 1960s taught by nuns who give her nightmares, and she’s determined to go to UMass to become an actor.
But this is not a memoir: “It’s based on a true story but not,” the actor/writer tells me with a laugh. Leone, now 73, played Christopher’s mother on HBO’s “The Sopranos” among other roles.
The Newton native’s literary bread and butter, to this point, have been poetic, candid memoirs, like, “Five Dog Epiphany.” But here, she’s delivered the ultimate Boston-Italian Künstlerroman, with sharp, laugh-aloud dialogue, oozing with charm.
The dialogue is so good, I’m not surprised to learn the book started as a screenplay — or that it just may end up on screen after all. Leone has rewritten the story as a pilot with a producer attached: Dorothy Aufiero, producer of Boston-set “The Fighter” and “The Finest Hours” and production manager on “Good Will Hunting.”
Leone will read scenes from the book at a string of 14 upcoming local events. Some include her Oscar-winning husband Chris Cooper reading parts. (“He’s hilarious as the old grandpa,” Leone says.)
Q. You told me this started as a screenplay 30 years ago. But what sparked the screenplay?
A. I’ve always wanted to write about coming up the way I did in Nonantum [in Newton]. I knew it was a very rich territory to mine. I have a father character here — my father died when I was 15. The only character I did not deviate from life was the mother. My own mother — I honestly can’t improve on that. My friends still quote her.
But a friend read this and said, “What I’m interested in: it’s almost like you outgrew where your friends were heading, and it becomes about that.” I wanted to go into the arts. That’s a crazy thing to tell your immigrant family: “I’m going into something that will be financially unstable.”
I didn’t take practical courses. My friends became nurses — I don’t say that as a put-down. I was just a weirdo and couldn’t help it. I found my tribe of weirdos in the acting world and writing world. And that’s what a coming-of-age story is about. Finding your tribe.
Q. True. How much is based on your life?
A. A lot. [My childhood] was such fertile ground. Even though at the time I wanted to escape where I was from — “I’m never getting married! I’m going to UMass!” — I’m able to be a storyteller because of where I came from. All that fueled acting and writing, which spring from the same source.
Q. We open with Christina, terrified to eat a BLT because it’s Friday.
A. The Catholic school I went to, Our Lady Help of Christians, took you on pretty early. I was 4 going on 5 in first grade. So I had nightmares every night. The minute I heard the nuns say, “Will you be willing to defend your faith against the godless communists who will shove bamboo splinters down your nails?” I thought, “No, I really won’t. So either hell looms before me, or impossible torture.” Between that and waiting for apparitions, I was up all night. [laughs]
So I had a lot to draw on. [Like Christina] I took off to Harvard Square every weekend from age 14 on because they had bookstores. I’d walk by Club 47 and dream of being old enough to go there.
Christina is well-aware of the class differences. I was, too. I’d see Harvard students, Radcliffe girls, I was aware they were from a different universe than I was. I put all of that reality into Christina’s character.
Q. That’s you on the cover, right?
A. You knew, huh?
Q. The adult nun looks like you. Was it taken from a play? I wasn’t sure about the kid. Are they both you?
A. Yes, I was playing a nun in a play in Dublin. The other photo, I was trying to look angelic, but couldn’t hide the smirk.
Q. And why Christina the Astonishing? Was this a saint story you always related to, or a story you stumbled on?
A. I was researching saints, and Christina the Astonishing was just the perfect saint for her to be. A world-class eccentric. I could see where Christina would say: “That’s my role model.”
Q. You’ve been cast a few times as a nun.
A. One of my fondest memories was eating lunch opposite Larry David, also dressed as a nun, for “The Three Stooges” (2012). We’d be [on lunch break] eating, dressed as nuns. Jane Lynch was the Mother Superior.
Q. [laughs] That could be a scene in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” You were also in [the 2013 HBO movie] “Clear History” with Larry.
A. That was a dream come true for me because I got to swear at him using my real Boston accent.
Interview was edited and condensed.
Lauren Daley can be reached at ldaley33@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @laurendaley1.