Margaret Mazzantini

The book’s plot appears intriguing: prompted by his daughter’s accident, the protagonist recounts (to whom?) his extramarital affair with a woman. She is someone entirely outside his social milieu, not beautiful, yet a woman with whom he has fallen in love for reasons he himself cannot fathom. Yet the struggle to abandon his own world and the birth of his daughter ultimately lead the protagonist to desert this woman, who is expecting a child. Feeling betrayed, the woman undergoes a clandestine abortion and dies. The central thread rests on the transition from an attraction that is fundamentally sensual and transgressive to a deeper affection (yet is it sincere?) that manifests only in a desperate attempt to save her. Indeed, at the outset the protagonist wonders whether “the body can love what the mind despises,” yet fails to arrive at an answer: this failure lies at the very root of the tragedy. Thus, while the premise is compelling, it is undermined by a verbose, inessential style and an overt striving for effect; furthermore, several episodes prove overlong, redundant, and tedious.