Books & Reviews Archive

> In Italy, Neela had a job, a daughter, a home—in that order, but without any of the three truly belonging to her. (...) She had applied herself with unflagging constancy to fashion a new shell; certain things are not learned through the eyes, but with the gut. Behind that thick layer of greasepaint, Neela felt inhabited by a monstrous underworld pressing to surface, which she relentlessly forced back down. After many years in Italy, after a lifetime of toil, she had some money, which in Ceylon, her native land, afforded her a solid financial standing. She decides, then, to return home. This choice appears incomprehensible to her relatives in Ceylon—a country devastated by civil war, military repression, mounting poverty, and the fallout of climate change: a country vastly different from the one Neela had left behind, now transformed by Western patterns of consumption and by new beliefs and customs. The author is not interested in Neela's future, whose life seems dictated by the immutable fate of the emigrant. The novel's central theme is the impact of this departure on Ayesha, Neela's daughter, the "dirty water"—so called because she has become Italianized, while remaining in search of a link to the past, both her own and that of her family. These two existential dimensions are not approached through a predictable sociological lens revolving around the question of identity. With great narrative dexterity, the writer unfolds the chronicle of Neela’s family and that of Ayesha in parallel; unlike her mother, Ayesha cannot return; unlike her aunts and cousins, she cannot place her trust in ancient remedies, in the wisdom of a magical world still populated by spirits and Buddhist rituals, nor lean on anti-colonial and revolutionary ideologies. Where are the roots of a "dirty water" to be found, obliged to survive within a post-capitalist society? Fond of metaphors, the author turns to the image of tropical trees that grow from seeds > that burrow into the cracks in the bark of other trees, choking the host with their own roots. (...) The relationship I wove with my life elsewhere was like this: an existence growing atop another like a parasite. While one sought to take over, dragging along its roots, exposed like raw flesh, the other, underneath, continued to survive on the verge of rot. I felt like a Persephone dividing her time between two worlds. She had sold herself for six pomegranate seeds; what had I sold myself for? The suspicion often arises as to whether Uyangoda is actually speaking of Italy, using Ceylon just as Montesquieu wrote of France by imagining a Persia that existed only in his *Persian Letters*. One derives the same impression when reading Igiaba Scego, particularly the latest book reviewed on this site: *Cassandra a Mogadiscio*. While it is true that the most captivating section of the novel consists of the chapters devoted to Ceylon, the author invariably brings us back, with unsparing starkness, to the existential and psychological drama of Ayesha: a woman so close to us, yet so distant because she is "dirty water." And it is precisely in this "coming and going," between an idealized island and our own daily alienation, that the substantive weight of the novel resides. The narrative structure is well crafted, relying on the first person when dealing with Ayesha, while shifting to the third person to chronicle the family histories: this approach generates a peculiar alternation between the subjectivism characteristic of the contemporary novel and the objectivism that arises from an urge to address the world and "universal" existences. The prose is fluid yet dense; one senses a philosophical undercurrent, especially in certain passages rich in meditation and abstraction. All of this enhances the allure of the reading experience. The plot cannot help but be fragile, given that everything has already been laid bare from the opening sentences of the book. Why read it? A demanding, yet fascinating novel.

The novel is set in Paris in the years immediately preceding the fall of Napoleon III’s empire. Nana is an eighteen-year-old girl endowed with a peculiar charm that stems, far more than from beauty itself, from her sensuality, youthfulness, and demeanor. From the outset, Zola presents her as a goddess, a deity of vulgarity and scandal. > Nana, very tall, very robust for her eighteen years (in other passages of the book Zola uses the adjective stout), in her white goddess’s tunic, her long hair simply laid bare over her shoulders, walked down toward the stage with an easy demeanor, laughing at the audience. Nana was naked. She was naked with a quiet audacity, confident in the power of her flesh. She was Venus rising from the waves, veiled by nothing but her hair. No one was laughing anymore; the men’s faces, rapt, grew tense, their mouths parched and irritated . For Zola, Nana is an innocent woman, audacious yet fraught with ambiguity and a sensuality that made her “a devourer of men.” The novel opens with a variety show at the theater, where Nana appears amid music, gaudy sets, and foul-mouthed, envious actors and actresses. Nana is, in a sense, a nineteenth-century “showgirl”—a performer, and a mediocre one at that, who is simultaneously the kept woman of wealthy bourgeois gentlemen. In this first part of the novel, the figure of Nana allows for a depiction of nineteenth-century society, where wealthy and prominent figures move from the tedious conversations of austere salons to the life of the theater, if not directly to brothels, squandering their fortunes on mistresses and prostitutes. Hypocrisy and deceit reign supreme. Yet this world does not suit Nana. She seeks, in some way, genuine passion: she beds numerous men, including penniless youths, alienating powerful lovers and thereby squandering influential connections. In the central section, which functions as a sort of caesura between the first (more descriptive) part and the second, more dramatic and complex one, Nana descends into the underworld: she becomes a streetwalker, engages in lesbian affairs, and loses herself in depravity. She does so with voluptuousness, not with revulsion. What ultimately compels her to change her life will not be disgust with the streets, but betrayal and abandonment by the man she loves, who beats her, robs her, and finally casts her out. Nana then resolves to return to high society, but “in grand style,” courting the envy and admiration even of respectable women. She becomes the mistress of a powerful aristocrat, resides in a sumptuous mansion, and squanders fortunes on jewelry, furniture, horses, and carriages. She stands at the very center of French polite society. Yet this life does not suit Nana. As she screams at the aristocrat, who has just uncovered yet another infidelity, > get it through that thick skull of yours: I intend to be free. If I like a man, I go to bed with him . Nana moves like a destructive force, squandering wealth, ruining powerful bourgeois and aristocrats, driving both young and old to suicide. Is she the personification of a social vengeance of the poor against the rich? Or simply the expression of an irrepressible craving for luxury, sex, and depravity? Nana is likely both. Her story ends tragically with her death from smallpox, on the very day France goes to war and the Second Empire begins to crumble. Disfigured by the disease, Nana is abandoned by her friends, who prefer to join the jubilant demonstrations for the departure of troops to the front. Zola is a great social writer, perhaps the greatest of all time. The primary purpose of his novels is to portray and condemn the society of his day from the vantage point of emerging social forces. In his work there is always a social critique that, while lending his novels immense emotional and ideological impact, often desiccates his characters, reducing them to stereotypes of a social class or a societal role. In *Nana*, there is something else. It appears that Zola begins within his conventional frameworks, but gradually Nana’s figure takes shape autonomously. She is no longer merely the representative of a social class. She is a woman who wants to live intensely, a woman who despises men and desires to destroy them for the suffering they have inflicted upon her. It is no coincidence that the turning point of the novel is precisely her abandonment by the lover with whom she had forsaken polite society to endure a life of squalor. Nor is it insignificant that the only person to exert any real influence over Nana is her friend Satin, with whom she shares a loving relationship. From a literary standpoint, Zola alternates passages of extraordinary beauty (the novel’s zenith being the description of the race at the hippodrome) with overwrought pages, somewhat striving for effect and melodrama, as seen in the concluding chapters. What endures, however, is an undeniable ability to convey to the reader the profound essence of events through a chromatic, almost painterly use of language, especially of adjectives.

"Over everything lies a feeble, faded, sorrowful smile." This line by Ezra Zussman "in a poem about autumn evenings" encapsulates the meaning of this book: dense, gray, and seemingly mundane. Theo and Noa share an ordinary coexistence, made of small habits, silences, and fleeting moments of love. Both have led solitary, difficult lives. Having met by chance, they took refuge, in search of a fragile serenity, in a small town in the Israeli desert, where it seemed that > the pale boulders, the slope, the heights to the east, even the harsh glint of the stars, everything was waiting for a change. Imminent, in just a moment, when everything will be clear . Shattering their dreary everyday existence comes the overdose death of one of Noa's students, and the boy's father's wish to entrust her with establishing a drug rehabilitation center. Noa throws herself into the project with enthusiasm: she finally finds a purpose in life and, above all, asserts her independence from Theo, who is older and more experienced than she is. She is also driven by remorse for having failed to grasp the pleas for help the boy had somehow sent her. The town is suspicious and hostile toward the project. Theo would like to warn her, but he realizes that > the only way to help her is not to try to help her... Am I lying in wait, motionless, staring at her in the dark with petrified eyes, waiting for her to collapse from exhaustion? Then I will be able to bend down and take care of her as in the beginning. From the very beginning. There is a protective, almost paternal feeling in Theo, which nonetheless encloses Noa in a sort of chrysalis from which she cannot escape: she is too fragile, too strong is the need to feel protected and to run and nestle > into the dark cave of the chest hair (of Theo) as though he had been pregnant with me . And, > like water slowly flowing across the inside of eyelids shut from exhaustion , the project dissolves into nothingness. Noa herself grows weary of pursuing it, and everything slips back into prosaic daily life, into > a quiet, blissful dream, far from ourselves, far from pain and suffering, intent on listening to the gusts of the south wind that blows and stops and once again stirs the branches of the crippled pines in the garden of the ruin, and from there sweeps onward engulfing the entire town, reaching to feel from the outside the shutters we have closed.... in two and a half weeks the summer holidays will end . It is not the plot that stands at the heart of the narrative, which plays out entirely around the existential world of the characters. The author, however, has no psychological intent; rather, the emotions remain merely sketched, lightly rendered, and therefore mysterious. Even the literary device of dual narration (Theo and Noa are the narrators of the same events) does not lead to an interpretation of the story from two distinct points of view. Far from it: each chapter seems an end in itself, so much so that the reader scarcely realizes they are reading the same story seen from different angles. The true theme is existential, cosmic, and philosophical. The true protagonist is the desert, always identical to itself and always changing, swept by a fierce wind and characterized by an arid environment where vegetation barely manages to take root. The town itself consists of vast empty spaces, like "strips of desert," a botched concept of a garden city > flecked with scrap metal and a few shrubs that have crossed the boundary line between plant and mineral . The distinctive feature of the novel lies in its attention to the urbanistic dimension of human existence. We often forget that the streets, the architecture of buildings, the monuments, the green spaces, and the environment beyond the urban perimeter (where the forces of nature reclaim dominion) shape our existence, imparting to us the character of who we are. Thus, the sudden arrival of change (a drug rehabilitation center, turning into the periphery of a major city, and so on) not only dissolves a fragile urban fabric, but also overpowers and distorts our very essence. And it is not by locking ourselves within the "quiet normalcy" of the home that we can defend against social decay and existential atomization, which also stem from the collapse of meaning in the context in which we live. The core merit of the novel is its writing: both spare and poetic at once. Short sentences paired with expansive periods, punctuation that is at times redundant and at others non-existent, and a sparing, deliberate use of adjectives all contribute crucially to forging a dense narrative climate—exacting yet captivating—where gray and muted tones prevail: an atmosphere of sweet melancholy. Why read it? Though set in Israel, it is a novel that mirrors remarkably well the state of mind of Italians at this moment.

Eighteen years have passed. The writer recalls a great love—his love for Naoko. The novel is both a search for her memory and a journey of liberation from someone who dominated his life. Naoko’s figure has vanished from memory, but gradually her features resurface: > her cold little hands, that lovely straight hair so light to the touch, the soft, rounded earlobes with a small mole beneath... the voice that would sometimes tremble for some reason (it was as if she were speaking on a hill swept by a powerful wind) . This is the opening of the novel, and right from the outset the delicacy of the style is apparent—impalpable and endowed with remarkable symbolic resonance: a narrative approach that mirrors closely the fragility and sensitivity of the protagonist: Watanabe. Watanabe, Naoko, and her boyfriend, Kizuki, are three close friends. Yet Kizuki takes his own life, and the relationship is momentarily severed. Watanabe moves to Tokyo to study and lives in a dormitory, leading a solitary existence with few friends and a deep passion for literature. One day, he encounters Naoko once more and love is rekindled: the two embark on long walks, in silence, Naoko ahead and Watanabe behind, > looking at her back and her straight, black hair, held back by a large brown clip so that whenever she turned to one side, it offered a glimpse of her small white ear . Meanwhile, Watanabe meets Midori, a girl vibrant with life yet also burdened by death, having lost her mother and now tending to her dying father. With Midori, too, Watanabe develops a relationship founded primarily on his availability and willingness to listen: a bond perpetually poised between friendship, sexual attraction, and love. Naoko disappears, only for him to learn that she has been admitted to a sanatorium for psychiatric care. Watanabe spends several days at this mountain retreat, where he reconnects with Naoko and feels a profound love for her take root. Watanabe lives “in a swamp,” caught between his deep friendship for Midori and his idealized love for Naoko: the young man exists as if in a no-man's-land, always available to others but never capable of living his own life to the full. Naoko’s suicide plunges him into despair, from which he emerges only when he realizes he must also live for himself. The pivotal scene marking this passage from availability to self-awareness, from adolescence to adulthood, is his encounter with a fisherman who, in an effort to comfort him, recounts the death of his own mother: > what is he even talking about? I thought. And suddenly I was seized by a senseless rage, wanting to wrap my hands around his neck and strangle him. I have lost Naoko! That marvelous body of hers no longer exists, and you come telling me about your mother! The novel can be read as a coming-of-age story: a young man becomes an adult through suffering. In truth, there are two other crucial dimensions: the theme of death, which, as the author observes, is an integral part of life yet can only be overcome through grieving; and the themes of literature and music as companions along life’s way. Death—Kizuki's suicide—hangs heavy over the narrative, a shadow from which the protagonists cannot break free: it is a painful past that can only be navigated through suffering. It is hardly a coincidence that in the first part of the novel Watanabe reads, and rereads, *The Great Gatsby*, drawn to a heroic and solitary figure, whereas in the second part, when Watanabe must grapple with death and suffering, his reading of choice is *The Magic Mountain*—the tale of a man awaiting death as a fateful destiny. Why read it? The delicacy of the style, the beauty of the characters—most notably the protagonist—and the existential themes explored are all compelling reasons to read it. It is a book to be read with immense pleasure.