Reviews of Books and Audiobooks in Italian
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Reviews of books and audiobooks in Italian Susanna Agnelli (1922-2009), Vestivamo alla marinara, 231pp. (1975). Susanna Agnelli's paternal grandfather founded the Fiat company in 1899. She was thus a member of one of the richest families in Italy. Vestivamo alla marina is an autobiography beginning in childhood and ending with Agnelli's marriage in 1945. The title \We dressed like sailors" refers to the sailor-suits her parents made all the children wear, and gives little hint of what the book is really about. It begins with the sailor-suits and her upbringing under the stern eye of British nanny \Miss Parker", but before long Italy has joined the Axis and the young \Suni", as Susanna was known, is volunteering as a nurse on ships bringing injured soldiers from Africa back to Italy. As a war memoir it is fascinating, including for example an account of the utter confusion and chaos created by the Armistice of September 8, 1943 (Suni was in Rome at the time). Judging by her own account, Suni was a very courageous young woman, but it is only fair to point out that her war experience was highly atypical because of her access to wealth and power. In the middle of the war, she takes a ski vacation in Switzerland. When she and her brother Gianni need a car in Firenze, hoping to get to Perugia where they can hide out in one of their grandfather's numerous houses and await the allied advance, as Agnellis they have only to go to the local Fiat headquarters and they're set. This is not to say that life was easy, and indeed the trip to Perugia ends in disaster. Even the richest of women could not escape the extreme sexism of the era. Sometime after Suni's father died in a bizarre seaplane accident, her mother had an affair with writer Curzio Malaparte (whose novel La Pelle will eventually be reviewed here). The grandfather responded by cutting her off from the family income and taking away her seven children|all of which was within the law, apparently. However, and here we see again the unusual access to power, the mother went to Rome and convinced Mussolini to intervene personally. Suni too was in a constant battle with sexist attitudes, as a nurse and in her personal life. One glaring omission of the memoir is that it avoids discussing the extent to which the Agnelli family supported the fascist regime. The issue is alluded to occasionally but never directly confronted. But whatever the truth of the matter may be, Vestivamo alla marina remains a fascinating glimpse of the period through the eyes of the super-rich. Agnelli tells her story in a conversational style, in about eighty two or three-page chapters, which makes it an easy read. Highly recommended. Milena Agus, Mal di Pietre, 119pp (2006), audiobook 2hr 21 min, read by Margherita Buy. A short novel of three generations of Sardinian women, focusing mainly on the life of \Nonna" as told by her granddaughter. According to the audiobook cover, Mal di Pietre \ha ottenuto uno strepitoso successo di pubblico e di critica, anche all'estero". I found some aspects of it very interesting (including a creative, unexpected conclusion), and others less so. The inclusion of the lurid and demeaning details of \le prestazione delle Case Chiuse", which the reticent Nonna rather improbably offers to her husband, seems calculated to gain an \R" rating, so to speak, just as is often done in the movies. Although I'm not opposed to lurid details on principle, in this instance they detract from an otherwise engaging story. The first time around I only listened to the audiobook, but this is a bit tricky because the story constantly jumps around in time. Reading the book at the same time is definitely 1 recommended, for the aforementioned reason as well as the fact the book includes some interesting Sardinian dialect (translated into Italian in the footnotes, which are in turn what one hears in the audiobook). Sibilla Aleramo (1876-1960), Una donna, 220pp. (1906). Sibilla Aleramo is the pen- name of Marta Felicina Faccio. Una donna can be regarded as an autobiographical novel which, according to the website Sibilla Aleramo.it, very closely follows her real life. For example, at age 12 Aleramo's family moved to Civitanova Marche, on the Adriatic coast south of Ancona, where her father managed a glassware factory. In the novel the town is named only as \una citt`aduzzadi Mezzogiorno". Aleramo was one of the first Italian feminists, and for that reason alone it is an interesting, important book. But it is not an easy read (I found the vocabulary rather difficult) and not a book to read for pleasure. In a sense, it is not so much a novel as a kind of tortured lament and self-analysis, an excruciatingly painful attempt to come to terms with her decision to leave her husband and son, as well as a feminist manifesto. (In real life, her son Walter was seven when she left, and they did not see each other again for 31 years.) She wanted to take her son with her, but under Italian law at the time a wife was little more than the property of her husband, and she had no rights whatsoever. Indeed only the threat of losing her son kept her from leaving the marriage years earlier|a marriage that began with her future husband raping her when she was 15. It is quite amazing that despite being trapped in the ultra-sexist environment of Italy c. 1900|trapped both figuratively and literally, as for a long time her husband kept her and the baby locked in the house|this young woman transformed herself into an independent, creative, feminist thinker. One longs to know more about exactly how her awakening came about, but in this respect the book is a disappointment: Aleramo gives very little in the way of details and examples. In Chapter XII, for example, we find: Pensare, pensare! Come avevo potuto tanto a lungo farne senza? Persone e cose, libri e paesaggi, tutto mi suggeriva, ormai riflessioni interminabili. Talune mi soprendevano, talaltre, ingenue, mi facevono sorridere...La loro verit`aera infinita. But what exactly were these reflections? We don't know. Earlier in Chapter XI, we read: In quei giorni di infinita solitudine, nel silenzio di ogni richiamo umano, abbandonata veramente ogni speranza e ogni fede, trovai in un libro una causa di salvezza. Now we are dying to know more about this libro, but learn little more than that the author was a \giovane sociologo" writing of his \viaggi in paesi giovani" and of the problems that arise from cultural differences. Why and how the book was a \causa di salvezza" is explained only in vague general terms. Some specifics would be far more enlightening. Later she writes a short article for a journal in Rome, which publishes it. \Era in quello scritto la parola femminismo", she says, and gives no further details. \Intanto il mio scartafaccio cresceva di mole...si svolgeva in cento frammenti il filo delle mie considerazioni sulla vita..." But alas, not a single example, not a frammento, is given of what she wrote. It would have been very interesting to have more detail, and would have made a better novel as well. But ultimately it is not a novel. Maria Corti said it best, in her preface to the 1950 edition: 2 Una volta entrata in scena, Sibilla Aleramo rompe tutti i ponti con la piccola vita borghese che l'attendeva; la stampa di Una donna `ela sua dichiarazione di guerra. I highly recommend this \declaration of war", but don't expect it to be pleasant. Isabel Allende: A great writer, whose novels translate well from Spanish to Italian (I have this on authority of a native Italian). Ironically, I probably wouldn't have gotten started reading Allende without my interest in Italian. 1. L'isola sotto il mare. Audiobook is good too (14 hours 10 minutes). Takes place at the time of the slave rebellion in Haiti, c. 1800. 2. Il quaderno di Maya. 3. D'amore e ombre. 4. La casa degli Spiriti. Audiobook (17 hours). Her first novel. This one and the previous two all involve, sooner or later, the military coup in Chile in 1973. The audiobooks of 1 and 4 are both read beautifully by Valentina Carnelutti, who, as it turns out, also plays Francesca in one of my all-time favorite movies La Meglio Giovent`u (a six-hour miniseries). 5. Il mio paese inventato. A memoir on certain aspects of her life (in Chile until the military coup, then ten years in Venezuela, divorce, remarriage to an American in San Francisco). Much of the emphasis is on Chileans as a people, but there is personal detail as well. Very interesting. 6. La figlia della fortuna. The story begins in Valparaiso, Chile, in the 1830's. At that time British immigrants were well-established in Valparaiso. (When Darwin was in Valparaiso during the voyage of the Beagle, he stayed with an old school chum there. And according to Wikipedia, about 4 percent of the current population of Chile is of British descent). Later the action moves to California during the Gold Rush. The main character, Eliza, is an orphan raised by a British siblings Jeremy and Rose Sommers. To avoid spoilers, I'll say no more; this is one of my favorite Allende novels so far. 7. L'amante giapponese, 281pp. (2015). A disappointment; toward the end I just skimmed.