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Katerina Tuckova'• Keller Editore

ReviewItaliano

The Heroine of Port Arthur

Emilio Salgari• Bompiani

ReviewItaliano

The Examination

> I publish this old story today because I hopelessly love its free language, its fable without a moral, its *porteña* melancholy (typical of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires) and also because the nightmare in which it was born is still awake and roams the streets . With this note Cortázar introduces a story written in 1950, during the years of the first Peronism, between 1945 and 1955. It was a period of profound social change: emerging wealthy from the Second World War, under Perón's leadership Argentina seemed to face a future of development. And yet, unease and pessimism were growing among intellectuals and within the urban middle class; a moral and psychological malaise born of the muted, tacit awareness of the contradiction between a cosmopolitan city, as Buenos Aires was, and a regime obtusely hostile to culture and individual freedoms. The characters of the story—the young couple Juan and Clara, Andrés, Clara, and the chronicler—wander through the night in an unreal city, shrouded in fog. Theirs is a seemingly senseless banter, constantly revolving around the futility of the intellectual. > All this talk, passing papers to one another, these café tables with books and books and books and premieres and exhibitions.... Believe me, there is a swindle here, a betrayal. All that is left for you is to join betrayal to reality, to life, to action, and with this and an emblem on the jacket lapel you are ready to embark on any career . The group has no destination, nor do the events involving them lend a plot to the narrative; alternating between prose and poetry, Argentine, Latin American, and European literary quotations, the youths continue to dwell on the very same theme, in an obsessive and patently futile manner: > a good biologist would laugh his head off hearing our squeaking. Because we don't even scream; ours is the piping of mice . > So absurd to talk at random, thought Juan as they stepped out, to hear oneself talk and know that one is never sufficiently in the right. This is another, perhaps the worst, of our acts of cowardice . Juan, you are truly right! Unfortunately, we are weary of so much idle chatter; we would like a bit of reality, of sound pragmatism. It is for this reason, together with the lack of plot and the shallowness of the characters, that I painfully decided to abandon the book at the end of the first chapter. The story might well proceed to change its narrative pace radically; I shall never know, so be it! «Free language» is fine, provided it is taken in small doses. The question that naturally arises for us Italians of the second millennium is this: how much of this story do we find in our own country? > Creation is born of morality, not of ingenuity (says Juan). Ay, ay, went Clara, we are spineless. Right, spineless, without tension. (...) I mean that we lack a spirit of system (be it freedom or for freedom), and this is above all a moral defect . Why not read it? It is profoundly boring.

Julio Cortazar• Voland

ReviewInglese

Family dancing

The central theme of the story is the family, viewed by Leavitt as a closed, central nucleus in which relationships among members are vitiated by convictions and hypocrisies. A family reunion is organized, serving, however, as an occasion for each to expect roles and behaviors from the other that often bear no relation to the individual’s true desires. Not even the discovery of one of the family members’ homosexuality manages to break this pattern, as the gay condition is subsumed within the roles and rules of the bourgeois family. David Leavitt has often been regarded as the writer of homosexuality. In truth, he is the chronicler of the bourgeois family in an open society, which accepts anything provided it is reabsorbed into established frameworks. The elegant and effective prose cannot conceal the passage of time on this story, now dated against the neoconservative wave that has restored to homosexuality its status as an otherness and a threat to the family. Why not read it? Because it is predictable and stale.

David Leavitt• L'Espresso

ReviewItaliano

Fyodor M. Dostoevsky

Gianlorenzo Pacini• Pearson Paravia Bruno Mondadori

ReviewItaliano

The Ferocity

The book won the 2015 Strega Prize and was framed by many reviews as a sort of Italian-style *Buddenbrooks*: one would expect a fine novel with a pronounced social dimension. Nothing of the sort. It is a dreadful novel, poorly written, intimist-existential, reflecting a perception of reality typical of the 1990s. Bored by the plot, disgusted by the narrative style, I stopped reading at page 237 and can therefore recount the plot only up to a certain point. It begins with the suicide of Clara, the spoiled and eccentric scion of a social-climbing entrepreneurial family from Bari: a scheming and greedy father, a typical Southern building contractor; an absentee mother, placidly satisfied with the affluence they have achieved, and three siblings; an established physician, a twenty-year-old well on her way to becoming just as spoiled as her sister, and Michele, the son of one of the father’s mistresses who died during childbirth. The bond between Clara and Michele is particularly intense, owing also to the young man’s fragility, who finds in his sister—so self-assured—a pillar of support and perhaps an object of love. The novel seeks above all to delve into this relationship, doing so through constant temporal leaps, from the present (Clara dead) to the past, with the young suicide victim still cast as a vivacious girl with an unbridled sex life. Revolving around Clara and Michele, across these different temporal dimensions, are the other family members, all seemingly indifferent to the terrible tragedy that has occurred or to the increasingly morbid nature of the relationship between the two youths. Perhaps because > we are not ourselves, (...) we are driven by forces of which we are unaware, we act without knowing why, we say things whose motive is unknown, crimes without guilt and deaths without apparent cause . Our lives repeat themselves according to the cycle of the seasons, with an inevitability we would like to attribute solely to nature, yet which belongs to us as well. > Startled by the motorbike, the lizard plunged into the blades of grass. It vanished among the branches, tearing in its flight the web of the jumping spider, which, having reassembled the image of the reptile through its eight eyes, had managed to avoid the impact. The spider scurried. The dry, parched ground registered the information, superimposing it onto the alphabet of ants crossing paths, breaking, bifurcating, and then recombining a line that was never the same. The law they obeyed shifted within them, confirming itself in the law of every kindred creature; it received fresh impulses from the depths of the anthill, and further still, from the tremendous force that changes the face of the seasons . It is certainly neither a social novel nor a psychological tale aiming to probe feelings and motivations. The author operates on a metaphysical plane, rooted in the deeply southern conviction of the immutability of the human being and of the socio-political context. Hence, perhaps, the title: *La Ferocia*. Still, a narrative rhythm could have been provided! An intelligible plot! What worsens the literary outcome is the minimalist imprint, reflected in an exaggerated reliance on full stops and the near-total absence of semicolons and colons. In this manner, it is difficult not to splinter the prose, rendering it ponderous and unintelligible. An example: > Michele returned to his room. He made to lie down on the bed. He stopped. From right to left. The nightstand. The wardrobe. He looked around with a worried expression. The half-open window. His heartbeat quickened. Stay calm. She can’t have jumped out of the window already. He sat down on the edge of the bed. And so on and so forth; now one understands why I gave up reading. Why not read it? It is a bad, boring, and dated novel.

Nicola Lagioia• Giulio Einaudi

ReviewItaliano

Daughters of a New Era

Rudi, the naive and dreamy husband of Kathe, one of the protagonists, encapsulates the novel's overall meaning in a poem: > against the light I saw/that the bridge has fallen/and the faint light/I have now lost/and I surrender myself/to the current that carries me . Four young women are lifelong friends; they fall in love, marry, some of them become mothers, are widowed or divorced—in short, they lead an apparently normal life in Germany between 1919 and 1945. They live through the economic and social crisis of the post-WWI era, hyperinflation, the political turmoil of the Weimar Republic (with the suppression of the Communists by the Social Democrats), the rise of Nazism, racial purity laws (with the reporting of infants born with deformities), the gradual yet inexorable marginalization of the Jews leading up to the Shoah, and the catastrophe of the Second World War. How is it possible to lead a normal life in the face of such dramatic events? > But what was left to do now, if not retreat into the private sphere? The world was no longer an enchanting place . (thinks Bunge, the spendthrift father of Ida, another protagonist). And indeed, the novel develops the stories of Henny, Kathe, Lina, and Ida from a deeply intimist perspective, only superficially grazed by the horrific events that affected the German people. Henny and Kathe have been friends since childhood and mutually decide to pursue careers as midwives, bringing children into the world precisely when one knows not what to expect from the future (a metaphor?). While Henny pursues the idea of family, Kathe makes different choices. The former marries young after becoming pregnant, has a daughter, loses her husband, and marries another, with whom she has another child, only to discover that her second husband was an informant for the Nazis; Kathe does not want children, is a communist, and urges her husband to become politically active, thereby upending both their lives. Ida, on the other hand, was born and raised in luxury; her father, on the brink of bankruptcy, marries her off to a wealthy and powerful banker, condemning her to unhappiness that is only partially redeemed by a long love affair with a handsome Chinese man. Lina soon discovers she is a lesbian and moves in with her partner, in a situation that grows increasingly precarious because homosexuality is condemned by the Nazi regime. There are many other characters, but even from this brief overview of the protagonists one can deduce the fragility of the entire narrative. It is true that war intrudes upon peace and that people strive to the very end to live in indifference; one does not expect *War and Peace*, but one might have expected a plot and character analysis capable of capturing the deep wounds of the human soul when confronted with danger and horror. Peace awaiting war creates a kind of suspension, and people cling desperately to the private sphere, to pale sentiments, customs, friendships, and familial affection. Two splendid novels immediately come to mind: Alba de Céspedes's *There's No Turning Back*, with its young women secluded yet sheltered within a boarding school, and *The Makioka Sisters* by the Japanese writer Tanizaki, a work in which the minute depiction of a 1930s Japanese family serves as a critique of inert familism and, at the same time, of aggressive, warmongering imperialism, so distant from the common sentiment of the people. There is none of this in our novel, so much so that Germany's dramatic events seem merely an excuse to inject some vigor into a plot that would be far too flat and mundane if set in a context of normalcy. It is the beginning of a trilogy, which we leave to other readers. The narrative structure and the writing also warrant a negative verdict. The four young women's stories are developed in parallel through brief paragraphs within a chronological chapter framework. Consequently, the narrative is muddled, making it difficult for the reader to grasp the overarching story, and the plot ultimately proves verbose and repetitive. Too many characters contribute to compromising overall clarity. The writing, in turn, is flat, reliant on short sentences and dialogue; descriptions of the setting (Hamburg) and the social and political context are sorely lacking. Why avoid reading it? Pointless, poorly written, and distasteful, considering what happened in Germany between the two wars.

Carmen Korn• Fazi

ReviewItaliano

The Son of the Sea

Let us imagine that in a world—our own—imprisoned in a crystallized social structure, an extraordinary event occurs, upending established arrangements and enabling the destitute to climb the social ladder. Perhaps a revolution is possible only in the wake of a war or a natural disaster. With a tenuous narrative, this novel introduces the theme of change, setting it in an era far removed from our own: 452 AD, when the Huns invaded Italy. We find ourselves in Atesis, modern-day Este, a town then lapped by the Adige River, which shifted its course in 589 following a catastrophic flood. It is a sluggish town, dominated by a powerful Roman family and local notables, the so-called *curiales*. Pietro is a strapping, red-haired lad who works as a swineherd; a hulking fourteen-year-old, timid, withdrawn, illiterate, born of a single night of passion between his mother and a barbarian "who came from the sea, from the lands that lie beyond the great water." Having foolishly humored the curiosity of Giustina, the master's pretty, restless daughter, Pietro earns himself a sound thrashing—just punishment for daring to speak to the girl: a swineherd you are and a swineherd you shall remain; better to consort with the buxom Galla, a commoner like yourself! Everything changes with the arrival of the Huns, received with dread as ferocious, invincible warriors: > they appeared very tall and robust, with compact physiques (...), their steeds had foam frothing at their mouths and eyes full of madness . In reality, toward Pietro and Giustina, who find themselves held captive together, they do not behave as abominably as one might expect: they spare their lives and allow them to return home, where Pietro will fight valiantly in the epic, futile battle to save Atesis. The town is sacked, the countryside is overrun by barbarians and bandits, food and shelter are gone; there is nothing left to do but flee and seek refuge in the lagoons, where the Huns dare not venture for fear of pestilence. They set out on a perilous journey, alone, brutalized by fear and starvation: two teenage boys, Pietro and Tito; a girl accustomed to the comforts and protections of an affluent household, Giustina; and an old black mare. There is little point in following them across the plains and canals leading to the Venetian lagoons: the narrative is trite; it foreshadows *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer* without possessing any of its pace or suspense, gradually devolving into a cloying tale, rife with implausibilities, and thoroughly detached from its historical and natural setting. "There is no journey longer than the one that brings you home," the author declares in the Acknowledgments. After numerous novels set around the globe, Morosinotto turns his attention to his native soil, embarking on a saga that presumably intends to trace the fortunes of Pietro and Giustina—and their heirs?—in the founding of the future, magnificent Venice. Well, he might have applied greater care, rather than relying on timeless adolescent clichés (are we so certain that teenagers in 500 AD were just like our own?) and striving instead to cultivate an atmosphere rooted in the marshy wetlands of the lagoons. One must grudgingly concede that war serves as an effective device for pacing: the defense of Atesis, with its skirmishes and plot twists, engages the reader, evoking an *Iliad* in miniature. The prose flows lightly and smoothly, free of rough edges: an agreeable read, yet one that contributes to the sense of hurried superficiality permeating the novel. I would highlight a stylistic idiosyncrasy: across nearly four hundred pages, the punctuation consists solely of periods and commas; there is only a single colon, and not a single semicolon. A display of virtuosity à la Cesare Pavese, a nod to the journalistic style so in vogue, or pandering to an adolescent readership presumed unaccustomed to articulate syntax? Why not read it? It is trite and dull.

Davide Morosinotto• Oscar Mondadori

ReviewInglese

Red Leaves

For William Faulkner, the short story is akin to poetry, "almost every word must be the right one"; and indeed, the narrative is dense, hermetic, rich in symbolism, and difficult to interpret. As in *Red Leaves*, the very choice of title raises numerous questions: what does it signify? For some commentators, the writer intended to refer to the cycle of the seasons, thereby emphasizing that what suffocates and destroys the Negro people is a natural destiny. The red leaves are said to express an existential, cosmic condition, as in Giuseppe Ungaretti’s poem addressed to the soldiers of the First World War: "Like leaves on trees in autumn." A great Indian chief has died; as tribal tradition dictates, those who served him in life (the dog, the horse, and his Negro slave) must follow him into the grave. Two Indians head to the slave quarters to retrieve the man. What disgusts them is the stench of the bodies, a revolting smell. The Negroes > seemed to be suspended as upon something remote, inscrutable. (...) They were like the roots of a great uptorn tree, the earth momentarily sheared away from the contorted, thick, fusty maze of its outraged and despairing life. From what the two men say, we learn that slavery is a burden, the fruit of the pure Indian people’s contamination by the white man. Born of a mixed marriage between an Indian and a white woman, the deceased himself had been to Europe and returned with several objects whose utility he did not understand; among them, a pair of red slippers; whenever his son tries to put them on, he falls into an unconscious state. What does this mean? Perhaps because > this world (...) is being ruined by white men. We got along fine for years and years, before the white men whooped us into using negroes. In the old days the old men sat in the shade and ate parched corn and venison slowly over the fire, and smoked and talked about honor and big things; and now what do we do? Contamination does not break the absurd ritual of death, as if to say that white, technological, and advanced society reinforces ancestral customs rather than evolving them toward civilized forms. It is mere corruption in an immobile society; it is not progress. Faulkner’s reflection does not concern only the American South, which, at least from what we know, seems trapped in nostalgia for the past; consider certain phenomena that strike us as inexplicable—femicide, infibulation, brutal exploitation—so widespread in our advanced Europe, despite proclaimed laws and values. Only individual acts of Resistance can overcome corruption and generate new visions and moral rules. Paradoxically, this is what the victim in our story does. The Negro, destined to follow his master into the grave, flees into the forest and, when captured, fights for life until the very end: he amputates an arm to survive the bite of a venomous snake; he accepts water on the brink of death. > It’s just that I didn't want to die, he said. Then he said again, it’s just that I didn’t want to die, in a quiet tone, of slow, faint wonderment, as if it were something which, until the words had formed themselves, he had not known, or not known the depth and measure of his desire . The death endured, without resignation yet with equanimity, bears witness to a moral strength absent in the story’s other characters, corrupted by white society while trapped in ancestral rituals. > The Negro was still about to step, his knee raised and bent, his head up as if he were looking into the teeth of a millrace. The pupils of his eyes were wild and cold, like a horse’s . Ralph Ellison, the first great African American writer, said that Faulkner > has actually explored the nature of man. (...) Faulkner, more than most men, was aware of human strength as well as man's weakness. He knew that understanding and overcoming fear was a large part of a writer's reason for being. Faulkner’s narrative is imbued with a strong ethical tension, a desperate quest for human goodness, for that which is deepest in the human being. He pursues this aim within his world, the American South, where everything in reality seems static and violent; yet what he narrates concerns us all; and quoting Ungaretti once again, one could say: "I seek an innocent country." At the center of his writing is the word, not the plot or the characters; and this is precisely its limitation, at least in the short stories: it is difficult to understand, it must be read too many times to grasp its manifold meanings, it demands too much imagination to interpret. Why not read it? It is difficult to interpret and, in fact, boring.

William Faulkner• Modern Library Edition

ReviewItaliano

> On the first day of school, the teacher placed a wooden box on his desk. Then he lifted the lid, peered inside, and one after the other began to pull out the letters of the alphabet... with twenty-one letters... you can build and destroy the world . Letters can be arranged according to the alphabet. To each letter corresponds a word capable of describing and qualifying, yet, unlike the alphabet, there is no logical or causal sequence among words. For example, Bandiera and Buio are words that both begin with the letter b, but what connection is there between them? And such is life: episodes, emotions, relationships crowd in and follow one another without reason, without rule. The book is a collection of very short stories, just a few lines long, which, taking their cue from a single word, capture the essence of a state of mind, of a social and familial context, of an existential condition. Entrata is a mundane word. Proceeding from it, from its very self-evidence, the author describes the profound bond between mother and son: > she hears you, inside your trousers, and laughs, and in the room where every evening you return to the world, together with her you smile . How many times has one gone to a pastry shop, to sip a coffee with a fine pastry? And yet, the word Pasticceria holds the sense of a forbidden indulgence, yet tasted ever anew: > so you drink a coffee at the counter, never taking your eyes off the chosen pastry, held captive with downcast eyes behind the glass. And you think....when you will be able to enter the pastry shop, part the crowd, set it free. And then offer it in sacrifice to your desires . What links the adverb Senza to nostalgia? When the child leaves school and > finds not only his mother but also fathers waiting for his classmates.... the child understands that inside his box there was one piece less, even though his mother was remarkable at keeping the world standing all the same. It is thus that, all at once, the child comes to know nostalgia for things that never were... above all he feels the melancholy of when one realizes they have stopped looking for something, of when one notices that among the many things learned, one has learned to live without . If one reads the novel a second time, with greater detachment than the first—when one had let oneself be enchanted by the delicate, muted imagery of the short stories—one perceives how the juxtaposition between life's disorder and the alphabet's order, the latter emblematic of the rules that loom over us, is merely a literary device. The short stories, which compose the book without any apparent logic, are traversed by a single underlying vision: sadness. There may be profound affection, such as a mother's, just as families may dissolve after quarrels and silences, but melancholy, a sweet ache of living, the sense of ineluctable and unhappy destinies always prevail. Yet then life does answer to a rule of its own; it simply has an order different from that of the alphabet. It is difficult to encapsulate states of mind and life situations in just a few lines. One runs the risk of lapsing into evocative yet fleeting imagery, necessarily superficial. The narrative remains suspended. The reader always expects something more at the conclusion of each very short story. It is a literary exercise that flatters the author, and fellow writers, more than it does the readers. The latter would expect a thorough, articulated development, worthy of the complexity of the existential condition. Why not read it? It is superficial.

Andrea Bajani• Giulio Einaudi

ReviewInglese

World without end

Two hundred years after the events recounted in *The Pillars of the Earth*, Kingsbridge has become a prosperous town whose prospects for growth are, however, jeopardized by monastic rule, which curtails entrepreneurial freedom in favor of rigid stagnation and heavy taxation. There is, consequently, the risk of an economic and social decline. The engine of innovation and change is a woman, Caris. She refuses to accept the traditional role assigned to women—as mother and wife—and chooses to lead an independent life, renouncing motherhood and pursuing a troubled romance with Merthin. Caris will subsequently become a shrewd wool merchant, an innovator—introducing the manufacture of textiles and thereby giving rise to the English cloth industry—a nun and abbess (paradoxically more independent in this role than she would have been had she married), a physician of great renown, a courageous political figure, and ultimately Merthin’s wife. He, in turn, represents the engineer and the archetypal male figure, capable of profoundly innovating construction techniques, yet conversely unable to comprehend the complexity of the female character. Summarized in this manner, the book might sound compelling. In reality, the staggering number of subplots, situations, and characters fails to lend dynamism or allure to the narrative: there is no suspense for an action-driven novel, while the characters remain predictable and flat. Caris’s tormented life and her problematic, complex evolution are never explored in depth, as though this character surrendered her love life and accepted her fate as an independent woman without suffering, almost like an "automaton," bereft of feelings and remorse. Moreover, the sheer breadth of the subjects covered renders the historical reconstruction itself exceedingly fragile, and ultimately unable to hold the reader’s attention. One need only consider the description of the battle during the Hundred Years’ War: accurate regarding the decisive role of the archers, yet tedious, verbose, and scarcely engaging.

Follett Ken• Macmillan

ReviewInglese

Wuthering Heights

A wild setting and free, violent personalities are the hallmarks of a complex and difficult novel. The complexity stems from the book’s “matryoshka” architecture: a first-person narrator records the story recounted by a second first-person narrator. Furthermore, the novel unfolds across different timelines, with frequent flashbacks. The difficulty lies in its language: the frequent use of dialectal English, a vocabulary-rich style, and an involved syntax. A gentleman moves to the country and, on a stormy evening, finds himself at Wuthering Heights (*Wuthering Heights*), undergoing an unsettling and, in some respects, terrifying experience. One feels transported back in time to a pre-industrial era unfamiliar with the manners of Victorian England, where a magical interpretation of the world still holds sway. This regression, which underscores the divide between city and country, between civilization and barbarism, is heightened by the use of dialect among many of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. From the outset, the novel’s opening foreshadows what will become the book’s underlying theme: the eruption of man’s primordial passions. Having struggled back to his residence, the gentleman has Nelly—the housekeeper who raised all the protagonists—recount the family’s history to him. Without presuming to detail the entire plot, one can summarize that the narrative hinges entirely upon the love between Heathcliff and Catherine; a love grounded precisely in the shared nature of the two characters: free, wild, and violent. Their love cannot be consummated in marriage—and thus recognized by society—precisely because Victorian respectability cannot accept that Heathcliff, a poor, dark-skinned orphan, might aspire to the hand of a young lady of good family. Yet Catherine happens to share Heathcliff’s temperament, and thus chafes against the rules of polite society. Catherine’s death, following a dramatic encounter with Heathcliff, unleashes the latter’s vengeful, sinister soul. At this point, the narrative drifts increasingly into the effects of terror and mystery typical of Gothic fiction, to the extent that at times Catherine’s ghost returns to haunt Wuthering Heights, reminding Heathcliff not only of their love, but also of his guilt. Yet the ending is predictable: bourgeois rationality prevails (there is no ghost), and the family scions marry happily. Yet is the story true, or merely a figment of the narrator Nelly’s imagination? Could it be that the housekeeper interprets the family’s affairs through the lens of her own fancy and local gossip? Heathcliff and Catherine are characters both modern and ancient at once. From modernity they bear the yearning for freedom and self-actualization; from the bygone world they retain a crude, vindictive spirit. The contrast with Victorian society is framed nostalgically—that is, as a return to a rural world where feelings could be expressed with greater freedom and transparency than under the strictures of bourgeois society. This sociological interpretation does not, however, translate into a genuine analysis of the characters, who remain impersonal and trapped in the roles assigned them by the author. The plot unfolds slowly, devoid of rhythm, often predictable and repetitive. Why not read it? The book is fundamentally boring, and the reading experience is weighed down by an unnecessarily difficult English.

Emily Bronte• Collins Classics

ReviewInglese

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Sitka is a remote Alaskan island where the author imagines that a community of Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe has settled. Relations with the native population have proved difficult enough to prompt the United States government to relocate most of the Jews to other countries. In a situation suspended in uncertainty, Landsman—a skeptical, disillusioned Jew, a solitary alcoholic police detective abandoned by his wife—becomes embroiled in the murder of the son of a powerful Jewish sect leader. Despite the obstacles raised by the police authorities themselves, Landsman doggedly pursues the killers, only to discover an international conspiracy to blow up the Grand Mosque of Jerusalem. > Times have always been strange to be a Jew, just as they have always been for a chicken . This sentence encapsulates the book, whose fundamental motif is the isolation of Jewish society, increasingly locked into eschatological visions: the search for the promised land, the awaiting of the Messiah, the allure of magical and esoteric symbols. Yet in reality, money and power also reign supreme. The novel’s opening is promising, as the author effectively captures the figure of the protagonist and the cold, harsh Alaskan setting, while successfully generating the suspense typical of a detective story. The plot’s emphasis on chess—the victim was a great champion—introduces a stimulating element, raising expectations tied precisely to the tactical patterns of the discipline. Then the book devolves into a hodgepodge, crowded with the most predictable narrative tropes of high-octane pulp fiction: an overabundance of characters, increasingly convoluted family dynamics, terrorist groups, secret services, and ultimately an improbable international plot. The book’s other motifs are the Yiddish language and the historically pursued ideal of a promised land—not necessarily in Palestine—where Yiddish could be used as an official language. Yet are the “yids” capable of coexisting with others? To this question Chabon offers a negative answer: there is no happy ending to the diaspora. The novel’s brilliance, but also the sheer difficulty of reading it, lies in its language. The author upends English by imposing an idiom of his own, particularly in his diction. Suffice it to consider, for example, that Chabon uses “shalom” for a gun; but “shalom” in Yiddish means peace (in English, *peace*), whereas slang uses “piece” for a gun. It is a clever play on meanings, demanding considerable linguistic knowledge and close attention from the reader. Why not read it? It is an overblown potboiler, prolix, where the author’s intellectualism overwhelmingly prevails, alongside his existential angst regarding the Jewish people to whom he belongs.

Michael Chabon• Harper Perennial

ReviewItaliano

You, Me & other People

Having struggled to finish this book, I find myself asking: are we men such narcissists that we think only of ourselves even when declaring our love and begging for forgiveness? At the novel’s conclusion, faced with the self-victimizing grievances of Adam, the feckless husband (my parents “didn't love me enough, and lately, neither did you”), Beth, the betrayed wife, takes his hand and declares, > I loved you with all my heart. (...) The problem was never how much, or whether, I loved you. It was the way you returned that love. You put yourself first, not me . Betrayals, secrets, and lies run through the entire narrative. Beth has discovered that Adam had been cheating on her for some time with another woman, younger and endowed with great erotic allure. She throws him out of the house: Adam despairs, yet does nothing to win his wife back, nor does he abandon his mistress. Adam had an affair many years earlier: by his account, a fleeting encounter which nevertheless resulted in a child. He saw no reason to tell his wife because, as he claims once uncovered, the child’s mother wished to raise him alone. Leaving aside the fact that this woman is the primary client of his investment fund (hardly a casual affair, then!), Adam is forced to disclose the secret: the boy has leukemia, and only a bone marrow transplant from his half-sister (Adam and Beth’s daughter) offers any hope of survival. Adam had always told his wife that his parents died in a car accident: naturally, this is not true; they committed suicide. Let us recap: he betrayed Beth, concealed the fact that he had a son, and hid the truth regarding the real reasons he was orphaned. As if that were not enough! Beth decides to sell the marital home; while moving, she finds photographs and gifts for the boy among her husband’s belongings, proving that Adam had followed his son’s life all along. Yet another lie! And there are still more, which we shall spare the poor reader! Alongside Adam’s secrets and lies are the stories of other characters, beginning with Beth’s experiences and emotions. While the others evolve and change, freeing themselves from the past and finding new paths, Adam remains stagnant: he proclaims his love, takes forgiveness for granted, and is astonished not to be welcomed back. And Beth? True, she has built a new life, yet she turns her ex-husband away with maternal gentleness, almost with a sense of guilt. And so I wonder: could it be that we men are simply made this way—fatuous, self-centered, fragile, and ever eager to elicit pity, because women's affection for us is boundless? The plot is excessively cluttered with events, many of them implausible, at the expense of psychological depth, leaving the characters repetitive and predictable. The structure weighs the novel down considerably: the chapters alternate the first-person perspective—Beth in one, Adam in the next, and so on throughout the story. This literary device, ostensibly original, fails to generate narrative momentum; furthermore, dialogue dominates, amounting essentially to soliloquies in which the interlocutors serve as mere megaphones for the narrating “I.” It almost seems as though the author was incapable of analyzing the characters or the context (which is utterly deficient) and defaulted instead to conversation: a mode that cannot sustain narrative prose, unlike the theater, where flesh-and-blood actors lend vitality to the characters. Why avoid reading it? An implausible and superficial story, a tedious narrative pace, a prolix tale.

Fionnuala Kearney• HarperCollins