Review by Booklist Review
Winner of the Strega Prize, Di Pietrantonio's (A Sister's Story, 2022) latest novel, once again translated from Italian by Goldstein, conjures a crime's haunting impact across three generations of family, friends, and neighbors in an Italian mountain community. During 2020's COVID-19 lockdown, Amanda leaves university in Milan and returns home to live with her mother Lucia. Newly separated from Amanda's father, Dario, Lucia also has a strained relationship with Amanda. Lucia voices fears of losing her daughter to her downstairs neighbor, who responds presciently: "Children--there are so many ways of losing them." Lucia's narration spans decades lived in the shadow of Dente del Lupo, a mountain once popular for hiking and camping and home to shepherds and sheep. Lucia was a young bystander to horrific events on the mountain one night in 1992 and then again at a 1994 trial. She now lives burdened with complex survivor's guilt and with her father's forceful bequest of Dente del Lupo property. The novel's five compelling parts change settings and focus while effectively serving Lucia's story.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Di Pietrantonio (A Sister Story) offers a gut-wrenching excavation of generational trauma rooted in a 1992 double homicide in the Apennine mountains of central Italy. Lucia, a physiotherapist, has lived her whole life near the now abandoned alpine campground still owned by her father, Rocco, where the murders took place decades earlier. Her 20-year-old daughter, Amanda, has left for college in Milan, but when the Covid-19 pandemic forces her back home, she stops studying and keeps to her room. Lucia's narration shifts fluidly between past and present, as Rocco's insistence on deeding the campground to Lucia conjures memories of the murders. Lucia was 20 when two young women were raped and killed by a laborer working for one of the local shepherds. The perpetrator also nearly killed Lucia's best friend, Doralice Damiani, from whom Lucia has been estranged since the attack. As Lucia weighs her uneasy inheritance, Di Pietrantonio doles out the details of the crime, the reasons for the friends' rupture, and the cause of Amanda's withdrawal, revealing striking parallels between mother and daughter. In crystalline prose, this contemplative novel offers a subtle but piercing meditation on the complex dynamics between parents and children. (June)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
