The first story, "Aprile", is much the longest. In 45 pages in the first person a male describes his life episodically, developing themes - island vs city; poetic past vs prose present; his friend Claudio's life compared with his own; his mother, grandmother and religion; the father who left; forgiveness; and his niece. We're introduced to different kinds of love - religious, mother/son, life-long between males, carnal with a stranger, homosexual. He meets his father after a long time. As well as slipping between the threads, the fragments also go forwards and backwards in time. Each episode can be 4 or 5 lines, or a page or so. It's a structure I've often wanted to use. The length requirement deterred me from writing such a piece.
In "Islington" a couple meet again after 5 years. The woman is married and pregnant, the man is in a gay relationship. They think about getting together again because both are in compromised relationships. The woman says
| forse i momenti più belli non sono, diciamo, gli incontri speciali, le prime volte, come si crede, forse sono solo i rincontri, le prime volti di nuovo, dopo anni (p.67) |
"Libera i cani" is also set in London. The main character, Elias, may well have appeared in the previous story. It's also episodic and flips backwards and forwards in time, though in this case along a single narrative arc. Elias has sex with a relative (a theme picked up from the first story), but here it's a gay relationship. He has trouble coming out to his parents.
"Autunno" is 4 pages long. An aging, dying actor still thinks he's attractive to woman.
In "Il congiacente" Marco and Alice go to the wedding of a school friend of Alice having met 2 months before. There are flashbacks to when they first met, and to the problems Alice had splitting from her fiancé after she met Marco.
"Sud" is 3 pages long and contains this self-regarding section -
| `È un tardo pomeriggio da cartolina', gli viene in mente mentre il telefono si decide a squillare; 'È un pomeriggio da città del Sud, sotto la luna che arriva i gabbiani cantano storie d'amore a chi vuole sentire'; se gli fosse venuta un'ora fa, una frase così, sarebbe finita nella storia che ha appena finito di scrivere, un vecchio attore malato e una cameriera bellissima dal nome fatale, e sabbia e palme, ma adesso è tardi, adesso le frasi sono per lui, per la vita vera (p.119) |
Spanish words slip into "El Presidente" - an old president and his young mistress have to helicopter out of the palace - there's an uprising.
"Candele" is at the fairy-tale end of the magic realism spectrum.
In the end there was more variety than the early stories led me to expect.
Other reviews
- Goodreads
- Carlo Vaccari (la lunghezza molto (troppo!) diversa dei racconti rende difficile prendere il ritmo del libro)
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