We live in a violent, terrifying world. Every time I read the news, there is a new report of a mass shooting.  Here’s the latest: “Five people are dead including the gunman after a shooting at 345 Park Ave., a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, on Monday evening…” (The Washington Post)

Homicide is a daily occurrence in the U.S. Mass shootings are also routine. The Pew Research Center reports: “47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in the United States in 2023, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While the number of gun deaths in the U.S. fell for the second consecutive year, it remained among the highest annual totals on record.”

We all watch crime TV shows, ranging from cozy Agatha Christie adaptation to police procedural shows. Perhaps those give us hope, because the crimes are solvable and solved. On a smaller scale of violence in our daily lives, our billfolds are stolen, our apartments burgled, and we are hassled or abused on the streets. These crimes are not reported in the paper. They are not always reported to the police.

And we all encounter violence in our lifetime. I’m not the only woman who has talked down a date-rapist. 

“I don’t use the ‘little raincoats,'” he said. Then he confided that he’d “cut the last woman” who asked him to use a condom. 

I don’t recall what I said, but I tried to act as though it was the most ordinary encounter in the world.  Somehow or other, I persuaded him to leave my apartment. Afterwards, I moved my desk in front of the door and sat on the floor, trembling and exhausted.  The next time I saw him on the street, I ran like hell. 

Anyway, such are our experiences in the modern world. Healing from the violence is what we seek.

I recenlty came across the Italian writer Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s intense novel, The Brittle Age,the winner of the Strega Prize in 2023.  One could say that it was a healing experience. This graceful, moving novel is not a mystery, but it quietly explores the trauma wrought by violent crime. The emphasis is less on the crime than on aftershocks among the survivors and the community.

The novel follows two time-lines: it begins during the pandemic in 2020. The narrator, Lucia, is thrilled that her estranged daughter has returned home from college before lockdown.  But something is very wrong:  Amanda sleeps all day, rarely eats, and doesn’t shower unless Lucia insists.

Lucia knows that Amanda is suffering psychologically, but Amanda will not talk to her.  Lucia learns from one of Amanda’s college friends that she has been quiet and withdrawn for months and not attended classes. The roommate knows that a man followed Amanda home one night.  Presumably he hurt her.  The roomate doesn’t know the details.

This is the second time Lucia has tried to comfort a crime victim.   In the early 1990s when she was 20,  her best friend, Doralice, witnessed the murder of two young women who were camping. Doralice was hiking with them on the mountains when they were attacked. After the murderer killed them, he shot Doralice, but she got away. Yet the murder of her companions derailed her life.  She couldn’t bear the memories: Doralice’s parents owned the campground where the two women had been staying, so there was that connection. Doralice left town. Lucia also felt involved: her parents owneed the land on which the campground was built.  And she had planned to go out with Doralice and the campers that evening: she changed her plans at the last moment.

There is healing for the mother and daughter in this novel.  The pandemic slows life down, though it is doubtful whether that helped much.  But action and involvement after the worst of the pandemic bring them together.

This is a beautifully-written book, the best new novel I’ve read this year, recently published by Europa.