Liberation

by Joanna Scott

Caught in a perilous divide between life and death, Mrs. Rundel is both a woman struggling to catch her breath, and the child she was 60 years earlier who struggled to survive the violence of the liberation of Italy and experienced the everlasting innocence of first love from an enemy soldier.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

273 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

from the backcover:
Joanna Scott is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Rochester. She has also taught in the creative writing programs at Princeton University and the University of Maryland. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship during the writing of Arrogance.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Joanna^^Scott

Reviews

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the things I most enjoy about a novel is being kept off balance, not in terms of plot, but in terms of artistic choices. Scott is very good at this here. Suddenly, her third-person omniscient narrator is talking about what didn’t happen or what a character didn’t think, or she pops forward in time, for example, “She would keep reading about the war in the years ahead until she seemed to be living half her life in other people’s memories.” Or all of a sudden a character writes another character’s imagined letter, complete with misspellings.

Scott gives herself a great deal of freedom, and it doesn’t seem to scare her a bit. There are a few places where the novel drags, but this is yet another novel (my third from her) where Scott’s deftness and artistic imagination turn an ordinary story into something great. I wonder what it means that she is not considered one of our best living writers.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fifth book I judged "by the cover." A woman reflects on violence she witnessed firsthand during World War II. Approached it from a different angle and a lot more of a "quiet" novel from this era than I can remember, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. (7.5)

[Walter Polashenski · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I thought the story was a little contrived, but it got more compelling as it went on. Still not sure the story in the present added much.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book #7 of 2009
I did not like this book much. I borrowed it because most of it is set on the island of Elba. I remember Elba being a magical place where I spent a weekend the summer I stayed in Italy. The book though, was rather dull. The perspective switched between Adriana Nardi, 10 years old - almost 11 - at the time of the Liberation of Elba, her mother Guila, her uncle Mario, a Senglenese soldier Amdu Diop who Adriana and Guila nurse back to health after he develops a fever, and Mrs. Rundel, Adriana 60 years later who almost dies on a train on her way to work. There is not a lot of action and most of the story is told in a stream of consciousness which I found annoying, difficult to follow and distracting. The ending also came out of left field and was so undeserved. It was a rather abrupt and disjointed end, which didn't make a boring book any better.
Borrowed from the library.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This almost ended up in my DNF pile - a few chapters in it was just all over the place - hard to explain but I didn't like it at all. However I stuck with it (it's very short which helped) and the story finally did settle down to be interesting - never thought about Elba other than Napoleon - so that was interesting. And a little magical. I never did make the connection between the present day and past other than the main character and learning where she ended up. Probably a 2.5 stars.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted more. Relatively nice writing- not too surface level, not too flowery. The characters were clear and interesting, but not nearly as full as I would have liked them to be. I rarely felt I was getting the meat of the story. Even so, the way humanity met imagination carried me through to the end. Oh, to be a 10 year old girl again.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by a Brighton author which was fun. Narrative switched from a young girl's perspective during the liberation of Elba durng WWII by Sengelese soldiers, to that same girl many years later. Slow at times, but worth the read.

[Foreign]

US: Reagan Arthur

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little difficult to read in parts. One entirely unexpected and undeveloped narrative voice. Just okay.

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice premise; threads of story between WWII and 60 years later not tied as powerfully as they might have been.

[Fergie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent read that takes the reader between the past (specifically WWII Italy as the island of Elba is liberated by French Colonials) and present day America. A quick, easy read.

[Rita · Rating 2 out of 5]

liked the premise of the novel but found it a bit dry.

[barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really hard to get into and not a very capturing storyline. Good writing, but needs more story development.

[Lisa]

I didn't care for the long rambling sentences so I abandoned it.