I had really high hopes going into this novel. A friend gifted it to me, thinking I'd enjoy it, and rightfully so. Everything started off strong. I mean, the opening line alone left me with chills. It penetrated my love of writing to its core.
"The earthquake is a hiss that starts in the sea and wedges itself into the night."
I mean...that's a brilliant, visceral opening that you can feel reverberating through your bones. And keep in mind, this is a translated text. To retain such strength and beauty from one language to the next is quite a feat. And there were truly so many incredible lines such as this found throughout the book that made me push through, even when the story itself began to decline for me. If only the gorgeous writing could have carried me through to the end. I tried, I really did, but wound up DNF'ing at the 60% mark.
But before I get to the parts of the novel that let me down, I first want to discuss the bits I truly connected with:
As mentioned above, the writing swept me away quite often. Truly, just gorgeous turns of phrase. I also really enjoyed how the author handled writing in 3rd person omniscient. As the reader, we are given insight into everyone's interior landscape, without feeling whiplash so often prevalent hen author's head hop between characters. The author also has an incredible talent with regards to conveying emotion through the simple changes she employed in sentence length and structure. Truly, brilliant.
Now, some things I had mixed feeling about:
There are no chapters. Instead, the book is broken up into seven sections spanning roughly a decade at a time, as well as a prologue and an epilogue. Within each section follows a series of mini vignettes, scenes that flow from plot point to plot point, some lasting a paragraph or two, but none longer than perhaps three pages. I just don't know how I feel about this particular layout, this flow of the narrative. It was different, but I can't say whether it added to or subtracted from the story itself.
At the start of each section, there was also a bit of history divulged to help the reader better understand the context in which the story was being told. I both enjoyed and disliked these segments. On the one hand, I felt as if I truly were learning a bit of history which is wonderful when reading about the lives of real people who once existed and moved throughout the world. To put the period of their time into context is always a plus for me. On the other hand, the writing in these sections was so incredibly dense, even though they were never more than a page long, that I struggled to retain any of the information and was unable to recall it throughout the section of the story to which it applied.
Now on to the reasons I inevitably wound up DNF'ing this novel:
At the start of the novel, there were two characters I connected most with: Vittoria and Ignazio. I was excited to learn more about both of them, but especially Vittoria. Unfortunately, Vittoria truly was a tertiary character who disappeared relatively quickly. Fortunately, with Ignazio, we (the reader) were able to remain with him for quite some time. Not-so-fortunately, the more time we spent with him, the less connected to his character and motivations I became. And, writing this now, I am beginning to wonder if that wasn't part of the intent of the author in some way. To showcase the disconnect the characters had with themselves the more successful their family became through a parallel disconnect with the reader... just some food for thought.
Regardless of if that was the author's intent or not, it is very challenging for me to to remain invested in a story if I am not invested in the outcome of any of the character's lives. BY the time I set this book aside for good, I honestly didn't care what happened to any of the characters. They began to feel flat, without any clear motivations for the decisions they made or how they treated one another outside of perhaps one defining "slight" they had experienced in their lives which seemed a flimsy thing. I wonder if the author felt caught balancing a tightrope, especially considering she was writing about real life people. Did she feel un-entitled to speculate into their particular motivations outside of what she might have inferred throughout her research? But then again, f you are choosing to fictionalize real people and the events of their lives in any way, I believe it's necessary to take that next step and add layers and depth to their character that make them feel all the more real, of flesh and bone and not simply a part of history.
In the end, I'm not certain what I might rate this story, which is why I've left my rating blank. This book has as many merits as it had faults, but this is only my opinion, and only at this time. Perhaps in the future I will feel differently r be able to read this novel in a new light.
PS--There is some pretty blatant misogyny happening throughout the book, especially once the reader reaches Vincenzo's POV. And I understand, it's the 1800s and this was one-hundred percent a sign of the times. However, it did leave me confused and questioning why the female character's acted the way they did, especially with hardly a glance at the internal turmoil they might have felt being treated so poorly by the men around them. The nuance of each situation in which a female character was present wasn't explored deeply enough for me to buy into a lot of their thoughts, feelings, or subsequent actions.