Magnifica by Maria Rosaria Valentini Review

This author is a discovery for those who are susceptible to the magic of words. The external action of the novel quiet and unspectacular develops (without shocks); it is the inner act that affects us. What we but always beguiled again, the delicate power of literary language. Gently flowing a soft flow of words, sparkling miniatures, surprising impressions, and no detail is too trivial, not to be refined by poetry. It is a contemporary crystalline prose, far from sweet kitsch, sometimes even a little brittle.

Italian Maria Rosaria Valentini, born in 1963 in Ciociaria (in Frosinone), now lives in Lugano and has seen a number of books published, including poetry, and receive prizes. “Magnifica” (2016) is available her first novel at the major publishing Sellerio and the first of her works in German. Thanks to its premier translator Monika topper whose performance deserves the highest recognition, we can enjoy the linguistic jewel in German.

“Magnifica” tells the story of a family from the home region of the author, the barren mountains west of Abruzzo, where life has always been hard, and privation.

Who had mustered courage and decisiveness, pulled away in the industrialized north of the country, Europe or America, to escape poverty and hopelessness.

At the heart of the women are from three generations: grandmother Euphrasia mother Ada Maria and daughter Magnifica whose perspective we are taking. , is the occasion of its telling that her son Andrea from one relies on the other day his parents’ house. What made him remains unclear (as well as whether he will ever return), but it leaves a delicate golden fountain pen as a gift with a mysterious mission.

Get quality help now

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified

Proficient in: Love

4.7 (235)

“ Amazing writer! I am really satisfied with her work. An excellent price as well. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

“In this ink, everything is included. Your story, my. Those who will come, those that already exist, and those that have never existed.” Magnifica undertakes and writes.

Magnificas main source is what she learns of her aged mother. These are not related stories, but “relationships, sigh, jumps, chords” – material that combines the narrator to a fine fabric of scenes, observations, symbols and motifs, depictions of nature, flashbacks, dialogue and sense impressions from which the biography of the family until the late 1960s and an image adds to their homeland. Then skips the story a few years to finally to the present – Magnificas adult life.

Even in peacetime marry Euphrasia and Aniceto. It may be love, from less than a year later, her daughter Ada Maria apparent. But rapidly Euphrasia alienated from their hulking man who does not go to war needs can and stay with the women and children in the village. Although he has long been her for the ugly “toad Rich” whose sexual practices they can reluctantly go through, it will be on his insistence, ten years later, pregnant again and brings 1,946 her son Pietrino to the world.

Aniceto has since long been arranged with his mistress Teresina, in which he finds more understanding, even if he has to share it with other men. After Euphrasia death she decides all to him, leads him the budget. One of the two children she keeps distance – knowing that they can never take her mother’s place. In fact, Ada Maria abhors, which has always also performs many tasks in the home, the rival her mother. She lovingly cared for her little brother, who is, and from the first day of an outsider finds peace among the dead in the graveyard. After a few agonizing compulsory school years, he is happy to take the place of the gravedigger.

The community observed this house suspiciously. Their narrow conventions define thinking and behavior. Euphrasia had life played the role of “dupes” – and yet was her rival in her heart grateful that she “had freed from Toad Rich” them. The two children are ashamed of their father. Ada Maria will never forget the nights of wailing and lamentation in their childhood; she knows that it does not have well-intentioned life with her mother Euphrasia. “Your story is a painful root for them.” But they can also feel the rigidity and lack of freedom of their homeland and a more open, joyful fuller life dreamed anywhere else. A specific goal they can not know, but “smart and quiet they reined in their desires and imagined she would make lace patience.” Perhaps you would there even meet the love, “what will never give it, and awakened yet glass dreams and confused, nourishes and can not discover it.”

The reserved ratio of the subsidiary improved to father to hunt animals with his ambition and to prepare. In that they recognize a sensitivity and care, which would otherwise remain hidden under a wrinkly surface. They discovered the Buchenwald – for the villagers an eerie place where evil spirits and gloomy figures on the loose and UXO can explode out of the war at every step – as a home where she is at one with yourself, collects fruit harvesting wild vegetables, think, dreams.

in this vague expectation of indefinite departure met the girl a being that would enable the villagers to panic: a scattered German soldiers, who had held almost ten years hiding in a cave. How do the two, ever vigilant, fearing the worst, with tiny gestures approach each other as is distrust confidence and confidence comes from alienation of affection and love, this most unusual, most beautiful love story has long been told Maria Rosaria Valentini in a sensitive, tender, poetic way. As the encounter Ada Maria changed, it can share with Teresina, which has become her confidante.

From this relationship of intense love goes Magnifica, the Great, Magnificent, Magnificent forth. She is the representative of new beginnings into a modern time, as well as post-war Italy in those years experienced an upswing. She falls for a number of years older doctor who marries him, pulling him as the village expires and becomes a fossil, to the big city, where she cares for her decrepit mother and her memories.

A slight melancholy lies over this story in a minor key, which tells about life and death, loneliness, community, belonging and love, in animals, fruits, flowers and trees play, which is crossed by smells, sounds and tastes impressions of human warmth, silent yearnings, hidden dreams and unfulfilled hopes. The quiet voice style that gave word choice that countless verbal treasures in unexpected places make reading an aesthetic pleasure – “sometimes words bread, water, meat.” – and testify Valentini notable literary talent.