Books & Reviews Archive

> Behind the wall supporting one another, huddling together, forming a clot of suffering and waiting. (...) I heard them moaning, pleading, unheard: because a woman's voice is merely poor breath; and the wall is stone, cement, bricks . This novel speaks of the separateness between man and woman, of two distinct worlds whose boundary is impossible to cross. This theme is "decked out in a rag of a plot," as Melania Mazzucco writes, and unfolds between two inevitable endings: suicide or the murder of the beloved man. The first chapter is set in Rome in the 1930s; in an impoverished and cramped family setting, young Alessandra watches her mother wear away, torn between the longing for love and a > petty-bourgeois husband, (...) even his physical appearance was devoid of any spirituality . Even then, Alessandra grasps the distance between the world of women and that of men. She perceives the "affectionate indulgence" that binds women, > all, resigned, accepted, with the dawn of a new day, the burden of new toils . On the other side, men > told nothing, disliked conversation, jokes, smiled little, (...) lumping her together with the children, the mother-in-law, the maid: lazy, wasteful, ungrateful people. (...) Gradually, beneath a semblance of resignation, there had arisen in the women a livid resentment for the deception into which they had been drawn . Alessandra experiences female friendship, welcoming and complicit; towards men she is shielded by her lean, angular body, even though she is the object of the possessive yet respectful attentions of Claudio, a decent young man whom she nevertheless does not love. After her mother's suicide, Alessandra is sent to her paternal relatives in Abruzzo, where the second chapter is set—undoubtedly the best of the entire novel. Here she comes into contact with the resigned steadfastness of the Grandmother (with a capital G): > why shouldn't a woman wish to die? Up there, there is a sweet scent of lilies, (...) down here, working, bringing children into the world. (...) And always being afraid of men because they are in a bad mood, because they have a mistress and spend money on the mistress. For the Grandmother there are only two alternatives: either yield to man, accepting his whims, his selfishness, and his betrayals, or else retreat imperiously into one's own world, "always saying yes, yes, and then doing the exact opposite." This could be Alessandra's future if she were to accept a decent local youth, but as the Grandmother observes, Alessandra too is enchanted by men—not driven by sex, but convinced that it is possible to speak the language of women to men, and be happy. When she returns to Rome to care for her now-blind father, she meets Francesco, a university professor. The third chapter is set in Rome during the war and the German occupation. Prior to marriage, her relationship with Francesco consists of long walks, close and intense conversations, love letters: Francesco is serious, devoted, cultured, and handsome; with him, perhaps, it is possible to live on feelings, small kindnesses, affectionate gestures. But the idea men have of marriage (the woman as the "angel in the house"), alongside political and intellectual commitments deemed too significant to be within a woman's grasp, estranges Francesco; not because he betrays her or lacks respect and affection, but because the bond has become a routine that shuts Alessandra out. > "Why don't you write me love letters anymore?" I would say to him. He remained pained, perplexed. "It is true," , he would reply, "perhaps because now I can speak to you whenever I want." "But you no longer speak of love to me." (...) "Many significant things are happening, and it is difficult for me to think of anything else. Perhaps you cannot understand because you are a woman" > . With a long narrative, which wears the reader out to the point of exhaustion, the author leads us to the only possible ending for a woman who asked to be loved as women would wish to be loved, affectionately listened to in every gesture. "Francesco," I burst out in despair, "help me, Francesco." He barely stirred; "sleep," he murmured, (...) In me the rabid dog leapt up, lunged forward. I hurled myself at Francesco and emptied the pistol into his back. The interpretive key proposed by the author herself in the 1994 preface, and which Melania Mazzucco seems to embrace in her introduction, is that of a novel straddling gender narrative and a metaphor for the disillusionment of an Italy starkly different from the one envisioned through the Resistance, in which Alba de Céspedes took part. There is said to be a break with her previous novel, which recounts the lives of boarders living in suspension, protected by the convent school walls, and able to say "it is lovely to sit and talk among ourselves, all women: if there were a man, we would not have dared speak" (see the review of *Nessuno torna indietro* > on this site). If we do not allow ourselves to be swayed by the noble gloss the author sought to bestow on it many years later, we realize there is a common thread running between the two novels: women's search for their own distinctive female happiness, regardless of men, and of sex. Yet while the schoolgirls pursue their own individual paths, not always fortunate, but nonetheless full of hope, here instead there is no horizon for the desire for love. One cannot deny the echoes of *Madame Bovary* and even *Anna Karenina*, especially in the words that conclude the preface: *Dalla parte di lei*, despite its tragic conclusion, sought to resist the notion that love was an illusion > (see the reviews of these two books on this site). I like to compare Alessandra to the figure of Murasaki, who understands that life is not like literature (the Grandmother too urges her granddaughter not to read books), Genji is not a figure, male and female combined, in whom one can place one's trust, and the great Japanese poet has the protagonist die. (see the review on this site of *The Tale of Murasaki* > ). Alba de Céspedes is an elegant author whose writing evokes Alberto Moravia. The novel’s seemingly nineteenth-century profile, suspended between fairy tale and chronicle, recalls *Menzogna e Sortilegio* by Elsa Morante (see the review on this site). The circular structure, constantly turning back upon itself without any real development, compromises the narrative's effectiveness, making it verbose, almost as if the author reached the end through sheer exhaustion, without an overarching design. Why read it? The theme remains relevant, but the narrative is too long.

Questo romanzo è un vortice dʼacqua, che risucchia lʼintero racconto in un unico incomparabile episodio, tragico ed intenso, dopo il quale niente è come prima. Il problema è che questo mulinello è una «sabbia mobile», così lento e vischioso da sfinire il lettore. Ma andiamo con ordine. Bob è un giovane di trentʼanni, padre di due bambini, sposato con una donna che lo ama; ha un posto fisso e unʼamante. Non cʼè nulla di apparentemente sbagliato nella sua vita, eppure Bob la odia: in parte per il solito sogno americano (la vecchia metafora dellʼAmerica alla quale tutti sembrano crederci), ed in parte perché Bob > ha lasciato nel mondo reale un uomo irreale, inventato, che fa il suo dovere, prudente, responsabile, fedele ed equilibrato, mentre nel mondo invisibile (...) Bob è inconcludente, avventato, irresponsabile, infedele, irrazionale, (...) lʼuomo che è un bambino . Questo lato invisibile prende il sopravvento e lo spinge ad abbandonare una vita prosaica ma sicura, per cercare qualcosa che lui stesso non sa cosa sia. Lascia la casa di proprietà e il posto fisso, e trascina la famiglia in Florida a vivere in un caravan, a lavorare prima con il fratello (uno smargiasso truffatore) e poi con un amico (un altro mascalzone). È una deriva inesorabile: non solo è un fallimento economico, è pure una discesa psicologica e morale. Bob uccide un uomo, anche se per difendersi, si disinteressa della famiglia, è coinvolto nel suicidio del fratello, fa finta di non accorgersi dei loschi affari dellʼamico, finisce a fare traffico illegale di clandestini. Accanto al racconto di Bob si sviluppa la storia degli immigrati haitiani, in particolare di una donna con il suo bambino. È inutile soffermarsi su questo filone narrativo, che avrebbe potuto dare molto se non fosse stato infarcito di riti vudu, del fascino dellʼesoterico, di visioni stucchevoli del «buon selvaggio». Caro Banks le sofferenze dellʼimmigrazione sono troppo gravi e serie per essere lʼoccasione di artefatti e folcloristici racconti! I due filoni narrativi (le vicende di Bob e quelle degli haitiani) convergono in un evento drammatico ed ad un tempo emblematico di una condizione universale. Bob trasporta con la sua barca un gruppo di haitiani, determinati ad arrivare in tutti i modi in America. Lo fa per soldi, ma il suo atteggiamento è di empatia per questa povera gente: li porta dellʼacqua, offre delle sigarette, sembra volersi far coinvolgere. Quando però vengono avvistati dalla guardia costiera e dunque cʼè il rischio di essere arrestati, Bob non esita a buttare a mare gli haitiani (uomini, donne e bambini), condannandoli ad una morte certa per annegamento. > È caduto in un luogo oscuro e freddo, dove le pareti sono perpendicolari e scivolose e tutte le uscite sono state sigillate. È solo. (...) Ecco come un uomo perde la sua bontà. (...) Dalla bocca allʼinguine, Bob percepisce il proprio corpo come una fredda barra dʼacciaio, braccia e gambe si induriscono come ghisa, la testa, occhi bocca naso orecchie, sembra chiudersi al mondo a poco a poco . Il capitolo «Per mare» narra la terribile vicenda dellʼassassinio dei clandestini, lasciati annegare per un pugno di soldi: è di una potenza evocativa straordinaria, anche alla luce di ciò che avviene giornalmente nel nostro mediterraneo. Lʼautore mostra una grande abilità stilistica, nella costruzione della trama e nellʼuso delle parole. Sino allʼultimo il lettore spera che ci sia un diverso finale, nel quale Bob palesi la sua bontà, una effettiva compassione verso gli haitiani, «così fragili, delicati e sensibili». Ed invece, lui, «un tipo gentile e socievole», commette un delitto orrendo, una strage. E ci fanno ancora più ribrezzo le sue banali giustificazioni, come «nulla gratis nella terra della libertà», o la sua auto commiserazione: «e infatti eccomi qui. Peccato che non sono più io». È facile, tuttavia, scandalizzarci per il comportamento di Bob; in realtà le sue azioni e i suoi pensieri esprimono molto bene la distanza tra ciò che proclamiamo e ciò che facciamo, quellʼipocrita perbenismo, la nostra falsa coscienza. Ed allora perché rovinare tanta bravura stilistica in banali disgressioni di carattere filosofico e perché tante lungaggini sulla cultura haitiana? Non era forse meglio focalizzarsi sui personaggi, o lavorare sulle reali condizioni degli immigrati, in viaggio verso il sogno americano? È un libro rovinato dalla presunzione dellʼautore di essere in grado di trattare troppi temi, invece di concentrarsi su limitate ma efficaci chiavi di lettura. Perché leggerlo? Vale la pena leggerlo solo per il capitolo «Per mare».

Imagine a *Promessi Sposi* where Renzo and Lucia are two lunatics—or presumed to be such—the setting is a late-nineteenth-century Lecco teetering between superstition, charlatanry, and positivism, the center of the narrative is an insane asylum, and the author is not Manzoni, but a debut writer. Antonio Ghislanzoni, the only historical figure among them, tells his friend Baldo Bandini, a penniless theater man: > we are not Manzoni or Stoppani; we are weary old *scapigliati*, good only for playing pranks and taking the petty bourgeoisie for a ride. (...) We may well die before the twentieth century begins, and we shall endure even less in memory and history. Ranocchio, on the other hand—I believe Ranocchio will endure. Not him personally, of course, you understand. But his breed cannot be extinguished. It is the dynasty of the mad and the misfits, of those whose only home is the street and the leper hospital, the plague-ridden wretches who make you hear the bell of the *monatti* at the mere sight of them . Ranocchio, or rather Ranocchia, is the nickname of a boy—a stuttering, odd fellow abandoned by his parents, to whom Bandini acts as a father, because “fools go to the next world in pairs.” Found half-drowned and stark naked, brought home by a desperate Bandini, the boy went on for days producing > greenish drool, (...) singing (...) songs in a dialect he didn't even remember, clicks of suspended consonants, vague and indistinct howls hanging in mid-air . It is decided to commit him to the asylum. But what had happened? > Good Friend (Ghislanzoni wrote to Bandini), the solution is simple. As is often the case, our Ranocchio’s madness is of the worst kind. Its name is love, and the contagion comes from a woman . And it is one of the worst contagions, because the beloved woman is Bianca, the schoolmistress: frigid, as though she were always clad in armor, she had allowed him, poor and ignorant Ranocchio, “to breach her fortress.” > When he watched her walk from afar, during those long evening strolls with her handsome blond Kraut (Bianca’s lover is an Austrian officer), Ranocchia could have sworn he saw her in armor. The shield and helmet gleamed, the spear was leveled: not even in the company of that beardless macaque face could she rid herself of the burden she carried within. And yet she took his arm, her gaze veiled beneath half-closed lids . What blossomed could only be an infatuation so intense that it drove the boy to feign madness in order to be committed to the asylum, where the schoolmistress had been sent following a nervous breakdown after her lover’s departure, or perhaps to conceal a scandalous pregnancy. Up to this point the novel runs smoothly, intriguing in its eccentric characters and its depiction of a Lecco and a lake belonging, to be sure, to another century, yet both so vivid with color and light as to seem living portraits: the author's love of the setting guides his pen, working a minor miracle of writing. Then, the story gets tangled and descends into banality. The many pages devoted to the asylum are cold, predictable, false; the place resembles a Nazi camp more than “a great resonance chamber” where “delirium becomes an echo / anonymity a measure,” where one spends a > time lost in whirling thoughts / crowded behind the bars / like naked swallows (Alda Merini). The plot frays further when the author turns to Ranocchia’s escape, the desperate search for Bianca just to know whether she is still alive after fleeing the asylum, and ultimately the unraveling of Bianca’s mystery, aided along the way by a witch and a parish priest who bears a damned close resemblance to Don Abbondio. Without spoiling the ending, one can say that the schoolmistress is strange, introverted, and self-absorbed, but certainly not mad; on the contrary, she is sensible enough to stage her own disappearance to escape a bigoted, obtuse Lecco. And since nothing is spared us, the final section even serves up a touch of esoteric mystery—a matter of incomprehensible numbers whose code only a child, himself a bit simple, manages to crack. One must accept that > in reality the world is uncertain and vague, like the sky clouding over in August when you cannot tell whether it will rain or the wind will turn : a conclusion worthy of Manzoni, for whom the common folk must not raise their heads, but place their trust in Divine Providence. Why ruin a fine idea—the portrayal of the world of the *Scemerelli*—with so many useless words? Perhaps that is the real mystery of the book. Yet we need not despair: in this debut novel, the author displays clean, elegant prose. The sentences unfold linearly, punctuation is handled masterfully—certainly better than Manzoni’s—the use of adjectives is sparing yet effective, and unusual words and idioms embellish the narrative. Not to mention the descriptions of Lecco and the lake, evocative and naturalistically vivid. In short, the author needs to place greater faith in his writing and streamline his plots, rather than overcrowding them with situations and characters. Why read it? It is intriguing in its first part; on the whole, it is well written.

The decommissioning with which the book deals is that of the Bagnoli steelworks in Naples. Through the literary device of a technician, Vincenzo Buonocore, recounting his story directly to the writer, the history of the factory’s closure and its impact on the social fabric of this town in Campania is interwoven with a personal tale. > If I am to be completely in this book, and Rosaria must be in it, Marcella must be in it, Martinez must be in it, the disappearing factory must be in it, Bagnoli changing its face; if you yourself must also be in it, with your pretension of telling all this using me, and my mediocre human story must be in it, with all its weaknesses, grudges, and regrets, what sense would there be in keeping silent about what happened that evening between my wife and me? The story is very simple. Buonocore is a technician who entered the factory at a very young age as a laborer; over time, however, his skill, dedication to work, and above all his passion for the plant—for the continuous casting machine—led him to devote himself to maintenance. When the decision is made to sell the plant to the Chinese, Buonocore is entrusted with managing relations with the Chinese technicians and overseeing the dismantling of the facility. Meanwhile, Buonocore finds himself involved in a relationship—one that remains purely platonic—with the daughter of a colleague, Marcella: an adrift young woman yearning to lean on a more mature figure. The two narrative threads, the relationship with Marcella and the shutdown of the plant, reach a grim conclusion with the girl's death and the definitive demolition, by dynamite, of the factory's remains, whose finest components, such as the casting plant, have been dismantled and sold off. Moreover, his wife Rosaria's discovery of her husband's relationship with Marcella compromises Buonocore's marriage as well. From the reading, an impression of contrivance emerges. The relationship between Buonocore and Marcella is a succession of episodes whose premises and emotional implications remain obscure; its repercussions for Rosaria are likewise investigated only superficially. At times, the depiction of the demolition takes on melodramatic overtones, traits of a social inquiry and political protest, yet fails to convince or truly convey the sense of what occurred. The most compelling aspect is, in truth, the relationship between Buonocore and the industrial plant. At the beginning of the novel, Buonocore enters the facility by night and climbs onto the casting floor to look down from above. > There it is, my plant, immense as a cathedral with a single grey-blue nave, its high ribbed vault and flanks arabesqued by geometric structural ironwork, traversed by bundles of pipes like venous networks, stairs, tracks, aerial walkways The improvements he managed to introduce to the plant convince him that > the machine does not yield to any bullying, it rewards solely and exclusively your intelligence . Yet once the plant is demolished, Buonocore realizes that a bond of friendship has been severed. > And now here we are, facing one another. There is only us: me, the crane, and this vast wreckage that I no longer recognize and that in turn no longer recognizes me; perhaps because it no longer possesses cognitive faculties, having lost its soul, its speech, its feeling . The most interesting aspect of the book is the grand theme of the relationship between man and machine, of a sort of infatuation that has characterized and continues to characterize technical culture, and which has steadily dissipated with the deindustrialization of the 1980s and 1990s. Why not read it? Whatever perspective one might adopt in approaching the book (a personal story, the depiction of a society in transition, political denunciation, an analysis of technical culture), the treatment remains superficial, the style unappealing, and in certain respects prosaic and tedious.

Fridolin and Albertine are a couple belonging to the solid, respectable bourgeoisie. Their union is founded on "a perfect interpenetration of feelings and ideas." Yet, a masked ball is all it takes—where both had been courted, he "with insinuating kindness," she > at first fascinated and then suddenly offended... with an insolent swearword , for them to be brushed by, > and not for the first time, a shadow of adventure, of freedom and of danger . From this insignificant prelude arise the hint, the desire, the possibility of a second life, made of transgressions, voluptuous secrets, daring acts, and even cruelty. Fridolin, a physician by profession, must visit a patient in the evening. During the night, seized by a restlessness unpredictable in so measured a man, he is gratified by a daughter’s declaration of love at her father’s bedside, is on the verge of brawling like a schoolboy with a gang of drunken students, finds himself in a disreputable neighborhood and accepts the invitations of a young prostitute, and finally attends an extraordinary gathering. Men, dressed in "festive costumes as white, blue, and red cavaliers," dance with women, > their head, forehead, and neck draped in dark veils, small black lace masks over their faces, but otherwise entirely naked . At first the scene is austere. Then the men rush > all toward the women, who received them with furious, almost wicked laughter . > The ineffable pleasure of the sight transformed within him into an almost unbearable torment of desire , but Fridolin is soon discovered. He is an intruder; he would be punished were it not for a lady stepping forward, naked but veiled, who declares she will "redeem" him, assuming the consequences of her act. He is safe and returns home. Albertine is fast asleep, but, upon his arrival, awakens with a shrill, sinister laugh. It is the conclusion of a dream in which Albertine imagines being amid "an infinite sea of nakedness" and witnessing the torture of Fridolin, "without feeling pity or horror, with absolute detachment": right up to the murder of her husband, during which > I was tempted (said Albertine) to mock you. to laugh in your face , to wish "that you could at least hear my laughter while they crucified you." Fridolin is shaken and, after entertaining the fleeting notion of "beginning a new life under another guise," resolves to take revenge on his wife by somehow seeing the night's adventures through to the end. But retracing his steps proves disappointing and concludes at the morgue with the sight of the lady's corpse—the one who saved him, and who was likely poisoned as punishment. > A stranger, an unknown woman never met before... represented nothing to him, nor could represent anything other than the pale corpse of the previous night, irrevocably destined for decomposition . "No dream is entirely a dream," just as, > the reality of a night, and indeed not even that of an entire human life, does not signify, at the same time, its deepest truth . A part of ourselves is, therefore, dark, pierced only with difficulty in reality, yet more readily knowable through fantasy, in dreams. This concept, the central thread of the novel, can bear two meanings. The first is comforting, albeit limiting, and reflects what Lorenzo the Magnificent states so well in a sonnet: > O Love, too envious of my bliss, let me at least be happy in sleep . The second meaning is more unsettling and leads back to the fact that each of us assumes that > the dwelling place of one's own mind is not, cannot be, entirely opaque to him (Teju Cole, *Open City*). We do not rationally accept what we truly are because we would have to acknowledge that we are not heroes. It is no coincidence that in the novel Fridolin does not go all the way, even though he would like to: he does not have sexual intercourse, for example, with the young prostitute, just as he would like, as a nobleman, to refuse the lady's sacrifice. Albertine, on the other hand, whose second life unfolds only in dreams, is free to give unbridled rein to her lasciviousness and her longing for transgression (she, married young and still a virgin), and to display coarsely the contempt and rancor toward her husband, rationally repressed. The novel's flaw lies in the sluggishness of the plot, which could be encompassed in a few pages, but which the writer instead drags on with pedantry. In fewer than a hundred pages, he manages to make the story tedious and prolix. Why not read it? It is pointless.