This ARC had been languishing in a pile for a couple of years now (the book came out in May 2024). It had sounded interesting enough for me to grab a copy in the first place but somehow it never came to the top of my pile until I was looking for my next translated read. I’m glad I finally got around to it.
In a small town on the banks of the river Lambro, two girls bury a body. This is how the story begins and from there we go back to the beginning of their friendship, knowing that it is always moving toward this violent culmination. The year is 1936 and the country is Italy so there is violence simmering on the outskirts as well. The fascists are in charge and to move forward or to have success in this place is to fall in step with those in charge. Francesca Strada is the only daughter of a respectable family. Her father is courting those in political power to advance his own needs and Francesca must help keep up the happy family facade. But she is increasingly drawn to a strange girl who hangs around by the river. Maddalena is known as “the cursed one” in their town. She is an outcast, even amongst her own family, and seems to live by her own rules. Francesca longs to find the freedom that she sees in Maddalena. But freedom comes as a price and, especially for girls on the cusp of adolescence, is it ever truly possible?
The intensity of friendship between teenage girls isn’t a new theme and it is one I’ve seen done more effectively elsewhere. Maddalena was a strange and compelling character but I also never really understood why Francesca wanted to be with her so much. Where I felt that Salvioni really succeeded was in the increasingly menacing background sense of danger. These girls are in danger but so is their entire town, their entire nation. Simply by putting the year 1936 on the page, we know that everything is about to change and Salvioni lets us know that without continually drawing our attention to it. There are events and parades that remind us of the political tension and outline further why so many of these people are going along with the fascist rulers. But there are tensions everywhere and Francesca and Maddalena are only two young people caught up in a much larger danger. I haven’t read much set in this timeframe, in Italy, from an Italian perspective and I found it fascinating.
Translated from Italian by Elena Pala.
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