Books & Reviews Archive

Castenate is an imaginary small town in Northern Italy, a > prim and proper little village, where to your face everyone (...) is polite: good morning, good evening, how are things? how is Camilla doing? which school is she attending next year? Yet everyone knows, everyone talks. In this "prim and proper little village", the author sets two storylines that run distinct and parallel for much of the book. One is set in the 1990s and chronicles the relationship between two teenagers: Camilla, > beautiful, with her red hair and green eyes. All teenage girls resemble one another, but she is special. She knows it, and she takes pride in it; Enea, a shy, bookish boy who always raises his hand in class because he—unlike the others—has studied. Camilla delights in bullying poor Enea, humiliating him in front of their peers, as when she pulled down his shorts, shaming him before the female classmate he fancied. Above all, Camilla's insult weighs heavily on Enea: your grandmother > is a whore, the whole town knows it. While this story is steeped in adolescence, tracing a relationship that evolves from friction to friendship and ultimately to love, the other is set during the years of the Second World War and is pervaded by the violence of that era. Rodolfo is handsome, daring, poor, and anti-fascist—viscerally so, belonging to a family of farmhands exploited by agricultural landowners. It is to this very landowning class that Viola belongs; indeed, her father is one of Castenate’s fascist hierarchs, respected and feared throughout the town. So too is her intended husband (they were seen kissing in a reed bed!): a violent young man, always eager to beat up suspected anti-fascists like Rodolfo. Despite being worlds apart socially and politically, a passion flares between Rodolfo and Viola—initially resisted by the young woman, only to erupt into a loving bond when Rodolfo must leave Castenate, ultimately to die in the Russian campaign. From this passion a child is born, who will be raised by Viola in the bigoted climate of post-war Italy. These are two vastly different stories in terms of historical context and emotional stakes; while in the former, set in the 1990s, it is possible to grant love time to unfold, in the other, during those harrowing 1940s, there can be no waiting—everything must hasten forward. For many pages, the reader looks for some clue as to how the two narratives intertwine. Then, much like in Majgull Axelsson's splendid *Io non mi chiamo Miriam* (see the review on this site), the grandmother reveals to Enea that she is not Rita, but Viola, and that he is the grandson of Rodolfo, the twin brother of the man who killed his maternal grandfather. > Rotten blood, all rotten blood, those filthy partisans. The worst part is that that rotten blood contaminated my son as well. In his veins runs Rodolfo's blood, partisan blood. But he will never return. And yet I wait for him, and it destroys me to think I can never have him for myself again, and I despise myself for this weakness. (...) I have no peace, Enea. I have spent my life lying. The novel should have evolved around this dramatic revelation—around that confession, so steeped in both hatred and love, which the grandmother makes to her grandson. Instead, the author crowds the narrative with too many themes, ranging from adolescent issues to the partisan struggle. What emerges is a muddled plot, compromised by a narrative imbalance between the two storylines that comes at the expense of pacing and renders the account redundant. The ending, which perhaps aspires to be a surprise, is instead mundane and tedious. Its fundamental merit lies in making us realize just how distant today's Italy is from the dramatic events our country endured during the war. The prose is simple, effective, and elegant all at once. The brief sentences and tight dialogue suggest that the author intended to appeal to a teenage readership, who might perhaps better appreciate Camilla and Enea's love affair than an adult reader, who is left more struck by Viola's tragic omertà. It is a pity that the author did not devote more effort to capturing the provincial atmosphere, the "prim and proper little village"; had he done so, he would have lent depth to the entire narrative, framing it far more effectively within its social and cultural context. Why read it? It reads well, but it is dull.

Masako, Kuniko, Yoshie, and Yayoi are four housewives; they work the night shift in a food-packaging plant. It is precisely there that they are introduced to us, across the various stages of production, from their arrival at the factory—always in the dark, gripped by the fear of being assaulted—to the assembly line, attentive to the rhythm of the packaging and the reprimands of the overseer. A shared habit develops, one that also breeds solidarity, if not friendship. The four women are markedly different: Masako, hardened and aloof, is a former bank clerk dismissed for her professional ambitions, suffering from a profound loneliness after having been cast aside by her husband and son; Kuniko is mired in debt due to her compulsive spending; Yoshie is a widow, forced to tend to her aged mother-in-law, who loathes her; Yayoi, delicate and gentle, is devastated by her husband’s confession that he has squandered their modest savings on gambling and prostitutes. One evening, thrown out by the owner of the club he frequented, the husband beats his wife. Yayoi unexpectedly retaliates by strangling him. > When she thought back to her husband’s face, the belt tight around his neck, right there in the entryway, she felt fabulously, utterly diabolical once more. Gotcha, serves you right! she thought . At a loss for what to do, Yayoi turns to Masako, who lucidly decides to dismember the man’s corpse in order to dispose of it more easily in dumpster bins. Taking part in the butchery, which unfolds in Masako’s bathroom, are Kuniko and Yoshie as well—partly out of solidarity, and largely for the money. Quite a way to make violent men pay! But why does Masako help Yayoi? Certainly not for the money. Out of friendship? Or because she feels > an almost savage desire to make a clean sweep of her relationships with others ? Is there a dark side to her personality that she herself does not know? It seems like the perfect crime, were it not for a petty loan shark who uncovers what happened; Kuniko confessed it to him to clear her debts. Instead of turning the four women in, the man proposes going into business with Masako: namely, making the dismembered corpses of victims of the yakuza, the powerful Japanese syndicate, vanish without a trace. Masako agrees. Had the novel pursued this narrative thread, we would have found ourselves before an original and entertaining tale: ordinary housewives turning a profit from corpses, mostly male; in short, a reversal of roles, a gender vengeance, however macabre. Instead, the author retreats into a conventional plot. In their investigation, the police had focused on the man who had thrown Yayoi's husband out: Satake, a psychopath who had served a long prison sentence for stabbing a woman to death while raping her. Satake had rebuilt his life, but the police inquiry ruins him, not least by unearthing the old, bloody crime. The man resolves to take revenge. He easily discovers what the four housewives have done and begins to stalk them. He is particularly intrigued by Masako’s personality, by her cold detachment and resourcefulness, but also because he realizes they are kindred spirits. He longs to re-enact that horrific congress with her. A duel begins between Satake and Masako, in which she maneuvers with consummate skill, even managing to turn the yakuza against him. Yet one night, she is ambushed and dragged by Satake into an abandoned warehouse. Is this the end for Masako? We will not reveal how the tale concludes so as not to spoil the surprise; suffice it to say that Masako finally comes to know herself. > Just as she was willing to let herself be killed by him, he wanted to be destroyed by her. Suddenly Masako understood Satake.... and loved him. (...) Their eyes met, their bodies became one. Now in Satake’s eyes she could see only the reflection of herself. A wave of incredible ecstasy was about to engulf her . The opening is promising; the first three hundred pages maintain a relentless pace, with episodes and characters that unfailingly surprise the reader. A subtle irony snakes through the narrative; the four women are examined in all their ambiguity: fundamentally decent women, criminals out of necessity. Masako’s personality is commanding—the unyielding, authoritative leader of a pack of terrified women who draw courage from her resolve. Rivalry, deference, envy, and fear churn among the friends, unsettled by Masako’s utter lack of empathy. Then the novel lapses into a conventional narrative: it loses its bite, turning sluggish, oppressive, predictable. One reaches the conclusion exhausted. Why read it? It is intriguing, yet one can abandon it without finishing.