Book "Montedidio" by Erri de Luca

Erri de Lucas “Montedidio” is a tender, unsentimental love letter to Naples, its streets, its people, its language. The first-person narrator is thirteen, has five instead of the mandatory three school years behind it, now counts as a man and can make money. He helps Errico, the carpenter who reads to him from the newspaper, and learns sent him to be neat and fit for life.

In a corner of the shop sits the old Don Rafaniello, a north-eastern European Jew.

He supplies the whole slum with masterfully crafted or repaired shoes. He wants to earn anything with his art – he is happy to have survived the war and collected in Naples foot. The cobbler with philosophical and theological vein impressed the boy every single day with his serenity, his fanciful theories and his wisdom. Rafaniè teaches him respect and expands its horizons; it supplies the external perspective of the city, puts them in a universal context.

The family lives in a rented house for dock workers in the narrow streets opposite the Castel dell’Ovo and at the foot of Castel Sant’Elmo.

The neighborhood is Montedidio ( “Mountain of God”). Money is tight, but it comes with hard work reasonably go.

The most important gift that the Father makes his son is a boomerang, which he won by a sailor. This “Wings of wood” – its grain, its shape, its weight, its potential – inspires and captivates the boy. Every day he goes now after working on the roof terrace to practice the throw.

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Because his body is growing, because he trains persistent and hard as he would draw a bow.

On the top floor Maria lives, a few weeks older, but from life already challenged quite different from the first-person narrator, the place with his parents recognition, support and decent food the two put trust each other, share their secrets will soon be “engaged … and, oh by the way, Mary, what do fiancee, anyway?” Now mature together, Maria always a bit ahead until both are ready for the big day when the boomerang will fly.

Also Rafaniello dreams of flying. In his hump, he claims, grow it wings that will carry him once to the Holy Land; the bigger they and his hump are, the more slender and lighter it is itself. Its preparation is a slow complete with life/ The main characters of this novel are sympathetic, sensitive art figures, spokesman described full of poetry and poetic. “Our whispered chatter dissipates in the wind, the us from the lips pilfered. ” Especially the women are strong, “Mom is great … you bend the fork while eating, when you get a slate thought.” Mary, “already and wife,” the boy can trust blindly. “I ask not enough for me to know,”

More than words to say gestures: “Mary at his feet spat and went away” – “Mary has done with backward pitched head ‘ ntz’ , a ausgespucktes no.” Naples seems almost transfigured. Below are the lively streets, above the view from the rooftop terrace. How beautiful it is when the child with the handsome parents proud at the Mergellina shore walks when they observe the tourists at the Beverello Mole returning tomato red from the islands; if they marvel at the port, which have brought the sailors from America to New Releases – Blue jeans and hula-hoops for example …

The evil is not hidden: poverty, addiction, disease, war, ruthless homeowners – oh, if only it would remain; but at least are also capable (if not in their nature) to despair of their feelings. The novel structure bears the strange floating, lyrical tone of narration. The author rarely lined up little scenes together for more than a a bit of dialogue, a few observations, thoughts about the people and himself, rather associatively connected as that storyline would constructed – page. The plot (which targets the culmination at the end) is coming together saying by the reader gently follows even observed without pressure continues to slide …

If you like sober, it will be dissatisfied with some constructs. Daily trained the boy dozens throws, without the wood ever let go. Enough for him always the same arm movement. What if he einübt the toss wrong? And the boy actually knows that returning boomerangs? It is discussed with no single syllable. In the end, the images are fuzzy, inconsistent symbolism. Petty carping of a marvelous book.

De Luca would rejoice He devotes several passages to the differences between Italian and Neapolitan the language separates the little people of the finer just like their food.. bream for the former, anchovies for others. the wise father, Illiterate, encouraged his son is to learn the “national language”; he knows that he only “be Italian” can – and “with Italian can defend themselves better,” the narrator teaches him the unfamiliar. vocabulary and the “proper” conjugations, but it comes too late, the ( ” ‘ Nuie non putimmo ” … we can not “), and the mother stated:” Neapolitans we are and that’s it “. A” traitor to the Neapolitan “does not want to be the son: he conjugates the D ialektformen and enjoy the cheeky chant of street vendors in the streets, with which one elsewhere, “no hairpin sell” could.