In this unexpectedly cool weather, I spend a portion of each day reading outdoors. It’s pleasant to bundle up in a cardigan and flop into a lawn chair: I’ve abandoned writing about books. Here is a catch-up post on three novels I’ve enjoyed.
Lost on Me, by Veronica Raimo, translated from Italian by Leah Janecko
Every sentence in Veronica Raimi’s charming coming-of-age novel, Lost on Me, is pitch-perfect.
I loved country life, and my dream was to have a farm, which conflicted with my other dream of becoming a rock star.
The narrator, Vero, blends humor and gentle hyperbole in vignettes about daily life. She has a bemused attitude toward her childhood and family relationships as she connects her history to her career as a writer.
Raised by hypochondriac parents with strange hobbies, Vero and her older brother grow up to be writers. Their father builds walls in their apartment, so the rooms get smaller and smaller. This is not a source of contention, yet their mother often escapes to her shrinking room with migraines where she listens to Radio 3.
While their father builds walls, their mother is melodramatic. She reminds me of Mrs. Glass in Franny and Zooey, wanting everything to be normal, but having no idea how to achieve this in her family of brilliant eccentrics, especially after Seymour’s suicide. As an adult, Vero gets almost daily calls from her mother claiming her brother is dead (he hasn’t returned her calls). Her mother’s hysterics are comical, but at the same time there is an underlying panic, a fear of death. She does not worry about Vero. Her son is at the center of her thoughts.
Vero’s mother is a larger-than-life figure. She nags them about how to write successfully.“My mother is convinced my brother and I have never become successful writers because we use too many swear words. She sees our vice as an act of self-sabotage, but in it she also sees the last glimmers of our youthful rebellion toward her.”
The author, Veronica Raimo, won the Strega Giovani Prize for Lost on Me and has also won the Strega Prize.
Eight Hours from England, by Anthony Quayle. Anthony Quale was an English actor known for his roles in Lawrence of Arabia and The Guns of Navarrone. He also acted on the stage and was the director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre for eight years.
Who knew he was a writer?
Eight Hours from England is an autobiographical novel set in the Balkans during World War II; it focuses on intelligence work rather than battles. The narrator, Major John Overton, is sent to Albania to run a special operation as a liaison between two factions in Albania, the Partisans (Communists who fight the Germans) and the Ballists (pro-German: they believe life under the Germans would be better than Communist rule). John cannot persuade the Albanian factions to compromise, because their feuds are too long and complicated.
In this beautifully-written novel, there are sharply-observed descriptions of the mountains contrasted with the men’s exhausting hikes in battered footwear; a wry observation of their weariness of eating goat meat; and the uncomfortable realization that they must huddle together, lice, fleas, and all, to keep warm in a cave where they must hide.
The dialogue is excellent: there’s something a bit movie-esque about it, perhaps because of Quayle’s background. I enjoyed and recommend this novel, the second I’ve read in the Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics series of Second World War novels.
The Road to Dalton, by Shannon Bowring (Europa). This moving debut novel, set in a small town in Maine in 1990, is very light for Europa, but becomes more complex as the novel continues. Dowring sketches the closely intertwined lives of four families in Dalton. Richard, a doctor who took over his father’s clinic, has lived in the same town all his life and no longer enjoys his work. His wife, Trudy, director of the Dalton Public Library, is in love with Bev, the director of an old age home, but neither can be open about her sexuality, because not only would they be pariahs but so would their families.
The drama of daily life spins out of control when Bridget, the depressed mother of a colicky baby, commits suicide. Her husband, Nate, a police officer who is Bev’s son, was madly in love with Bridget and had no clue about her state of mind. He rapidly descends into self-destructive drinking, while Bev quits her job to take care of the baby.
Bridget’s suicide is a cloud over the whole town. Her mother, who lives in the rich house in town and liked lording it over others, is so shattered she barely leaves the house. And others are uncomfortable: they think suicide is for people with cancer.
Bowring’s quiet, present-tense prose has an underlying vigor that keeps you reading. She breaks up paragraphs with lyrical fragments that turn bits of prose into poetry. This is a fast-paced, perfect summer book, and, I might add, most probably a women’s book.
A light read for a summer’s day.