When I wrote about Ragusa's Castle of Donnafugata for Italy Magazine, several readers contacted me to say that it was the setting of this book. Sadl...moreWhen I wrote about Ragusa's Castle of Donnafugata for Italy Magazine, several readers contacted me to say that it was the setting of this book. Sadly, that is not so but I am grateful to them for pointing the book out to me. As Marlena De Blasi states in an introductory note, Donnafugata is the name of several real and fictional properties in Sicily, most famously the one near Palermo in Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard. However, De Blasi's tale is none the less fascinating for that:
In 1995, De Blasi travelled to the island with her Venetian husband to complete a journalistic assignment. For various reasons this work project did not come to fruition but one day, the couple stumble upon the Villa Donnafugata and there they meet the fascinating Tosca and the community of women over which she presides.
De Blasi's powers of description are superb and, although I live in Sicily, I felt transported to a world within my own world as she set the scene: I could almost smell the perfume of the gardens, feel the texture of the table linen and taste the feasts which the women prepare with ingredients that I have come to know so well. As a reader I often skip descriptive passages but here I did not want them to end.
As the couple become more and more drawn into their surroundings and the life of the Villa, Tosca decides to tell her story to the writer De Blasi and we are taken back to the Sicily of seventy years ago as the magnificent Tosca weaves the strands of her tale: poverty, riches, great love, crime, loss and a fateful journey to Palermo during which she finds both herself and her purpose in life.
But the story does not end here for there is a twist in the plot towards the end of the book which will have you weeping and jumping for joy at the same time.
I admit I couldn't put the book down and what else are summers for if not a little romantic indulgence? Is the story true? De Blasi says it is and the book is classified as a travel memoir. One thing I do know is that anything can happen in Sicily and, however much of it you believe, this is a jolly good yarn.
There is an interesting interview with Marlena De Blasi at the end of this edition and I would agree with much of what she says, but not with her assertion that "Sicily is not really Italy". Sicily is, if anything, an exaggeration of Italy and for me Barzini's words sum it up:
"Sicily is the schoolroom model of Italy for beginners, with every Italian quality and defect magnified, exasperated, and brightly coloured... Everywhere in Italy life is more or less slowed down by the exuberant intelligence of its inhabitants: in Sicily it is practically paralysed by it."
My guess is that Marlena De Blasi would agree with the second, but not the first, sentence of this quotation.
Very occasionally, I come across a book that is so interesting that I read it in one sitting and this is one of these. The subject matter is a virtua...moreVery occasionally, I come across a book that is so interesting that I read it in one sitting and this is one of these. The subject matter is a virtually forgotten incident which occurred in 1926 and its protagonists are Violet Gibson, an aristocratic British spinster and Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy. If events that morning had gone just a little differently, the whole course of twentieth century history might have been very different.
On that long ago Wednesday Violet Gibson had set out from the convent where she was staying in Rome carrying a pistol, a stone and a scrap of newspaper on which she had written "Palazzo del Littorio", the address of the Fascist Party headquarters where she intended to carry out her deed in the afternoon. But instead she stopped at the Campodoglio where a crowd had gathered because of Mussolini's presence and, seeing him emerge from the Palazzo dei Conservatori, she shot him at point blank range, injuring the tip of his nose. Violet Gibson got as close to her target as Jack Ruby got to Lee Harvey Oswald 37 years later, murder, as the author of this book points out, sometimes being " a very intimate business".
At this point you may well be asking yourselves, as I did, why you have not heard of this incident before and the answer seems to be because it suited both the British and Italian governments to hush it up. It made the newspapers in both countries, of course, and Mussolini's supporters bayed for Violet's blood but both sets of diplomats were only too happy for Violet's family to take her back to Britain and have her quietly shut away. That is what happened and Violet remained in what we would now call a "private mental health facility" for the rest of her life.
Two questions remain about Violet: why did she do it and was she mad? The first has never been definitively answered, as Violet always implied that there were others involved, though no evidence of this was ever found. If she was mad , she was an "intelligent lunatic" who read the papers and analysed political events. She was also born at a time when women of her class were brought up to be ornaments. It is possible, then, that she was looking for a cause and she seems to have thought that she was acting on some sort of divine command.
For years, Violet led investigators and her doctors a dance, at one point asserting,
"What I say can't be believed because I am mad"
and she hardly helped her own cause. Despite her numerous, cogent pleas to the highest in the land, she was never set free or even allowed to reside in a Catholic hospital as she requested and her family became exasperated and more than a little concerned about costs. At this point the book becomes a kind of chronicle of the way in which the well-off mentally ill were treated in the first half of the twentieth century and it is none the less fascinating for that.
The book, however, is as much Benito Mussolini's story as it is Violet's and its early part poses a third question: was Mussolini mad? I'll leave you to make up your own minds on that one!
Meanwhile, back to our mysterious "heroine": When Violet Gibson died in 1956 no public announcement was made and no friend or relative attended her funeral. She remains, in death as in life, an enigma.
Having resisted both the book and the film for some time because of the hype, I finally decided I had to find out for myself what all the fuss was abo...moreHaving resisted both the book and the film for some time because of the hype, I finally decided I had to find out for myself what all the fuss was about. Now, I know you shouldn't see the film first, but that's what I did and, like most people, I guess, I enjoyed the Italian part but was puzzled by the middle, "Pray" part, which I did not particularly enjoy. I did quite like the final, "Love" part - who could not, when it's got dishy Javier Bardem as Felipe? - though I must admit I couldn't relate to Liz's reluctance to go away with him!
Anyway, it all made me want to read the book to find out more about Liz Gilbert's true story and I have to say, it is not your usual kind of travel book: it is, as it claims to be, the tale of "one woman's search for everything" and it is well written, witty and intriguing. The only problem is that many of us may think that Ms Gilbert already had pretty much everything: an acclaimed writer and journalist, she had beauty, money, a life-style to match and what most women would regard as a perfectly acceptable lover.
However, I can understand why someone with the means - and Ms Gilbert does admit that she was lucky to have the means - would want to spend time "marvelling" at the food and beauty of Italy and, apart from the fact that her character seems to think that language learning consists of absorbing the contents of a dictionary, the Italian section of the book is highly readable. Ms Gilbert does write beautifully about food but those of you who have seen the film may be disappointed to learn that the scene where the Italian landlady explains how to use the bath is not in the book; sadly, it was always extremely unlikely that someone with pigeon English would have no difficulty with the passive tense with "get".
In short, I loved Ms Gilbert's descriptions of Rome, disliked her dismissal of the city of Messina and nodded as I read her observation that visiting a place requires a totally different kind of energy to that needed when you live there.
The second part of the book presented more problems for me, as did the middle section of the film, and I put some of this down to my British cynicism, for it seems to me that Ms Gilbert's guru had it made: no one with any real problem was allowed to visit her ashram, those who had suffered recent trauma were also barred and people actually paid good money to go there and wash floors. I became increasingly incredulous as I read and frankly, the descriptions of chanting soon turned into endless chants themselves.
It was a relief, then , to reach part three of the book and I did learn a lot about Balinese history and culture from it. From the character of Felipe I also learned more about how people react to extreme poverty and I am grateful for that. But again, the endless descriptions of meditative processes began to pall and the cynic in me wondered again at the self-indulgence of it all. I also wanted to know far more about Felipe and the process of learning to trust again.
Would I recommend the book? Yes, because there is much to learn from here and much can be forgiven because of Ms Gilbert's writing style. But do not expect a light read in the form of a straightforward travel book or romance!(less)
This is the Italian edition of "Lettre à ma fille qui veut porter le voile"["Letter to my Daughter who wants to wear the Veil"] b...moreThis is the Italian edition of "Lettre à ma fille qui veut porter le voile"["Letter to my Daughter who wants to wear the Veil"] by the French-ALgerian journalist Leila Djitli.
Aicha is a French-Algerrian woman who has fought hard for her freedoms and her place in French society. When her seventeen-year-old daughter, Nawel, suddenly decides that she wants to wear full Islamic dress, Aicha feels that these freedoms are threatened.
Shocked and upset, she resists the temptation to forbid her daughter to wear the veil and instead writes Nawel a long letter in which she explains her beliefs, history, hopes for her daughter's future and fears. She also sets down her thoughts on Islam and modern France.
She points out to Nawel that a Muslim man can wear a religious sign - such as the beard - without changing his whole life but that the moment a woman dons the full veil, the veil "speaks about her and before her". The veil, argues Aicha, demeans not only women but men, as it has implications for the way in which men perceive women.
Aicha feels that the veil negates her own history and, with it, the history of Algerian immigration in twentieth century France. As she awaits Nawel's coming of age, she tries to make her see that the freedoms she is rebelling against could enrich her life and help her achieve her dreams, one of which, Aicha is sure, is independence.
"Religion can give you a lot, but not everything."
We do not know what Nawel's final decision will be but the book leaves the reader hoping that she will heed her mother and not be taken in by the peers who are pressurising her to don the veil for their own reasons. Through pen portraits of some of Aicha's friends, we also learn a lot abvout the lives of French-Algerian women today. But most of all this is Aicha's story: of immigration, of the battle for acceptance and of a woman who values freedom.
As the "burqa debate" continues to provoke strong feelings in both France and Italy, this is a timely book.
The novelist, journalist and screenwriter Barbara Alberti was shocked when a female politician who had obviou...more"RECLAIM YOUR FACE"
The novelist, journalist and screenwriter Barbara Alberti was shocked when a female politician who had obviously had a facelift and other invasive "anti-ageing" treatments appeared on Italian television to launch a campaign which would "liberate" Muslim women from the obligation to wear the veil. What scandalised Alberti was the politician's total lack of self-irony and she takes, as her thesis for this book, the idea that plastic surgery is the "western woman's burqa".
Using examples from history, literature, the lives of the famous, her own life and letters from her readers, Alberti demonstrates that women in the west are being denied a fundamental human right - the right to age naturally.
For me, one of the saddest episodes in the book is the true story of a woman of fifty-four who agrees to a meeting with the man she loved at eighteen. The two meet, go to a hotel and the man roughly makes love to her. In the morning she wakes up in his arms and he is looking at her. Then he, who is eight years her senior, says,
"It's the first time I've had an old woman in my bed".
The cruelty of this man is unbelieveable and I cried as I thought of the woman making preparations and going to buy herself beautiful lingerie with a heart full of hope. Reading such an account, a woman d'un certain age is likely to feel she has only two choices: if she has the means, to undergo all the age-defying treatments on offer, even at the risk of her life, or to give up the idea of love and companionship with a man forever.
But surely there must be another way? Can we not be who we are? Yes, we can, says Alberti and we must:
"Cambiate età ogni giorno. Siate nonne a quindici anni, fidanzate a ottanta. Ma non siate mai quello che gli altri vogliono."
I found this a fascinating and thought-provoking book, as subversive as de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age. It is not yet available in English but, sisters, I urge you to demand an English edition!
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