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elliotlea's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Death of parent, Pedophilia, and War
kirstenfindlay's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
bill_flanagan's review against another edition
4.0
akibsi's review against another edition
4.0
mariage's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.0
quadruploni's review against another edition
3.0
An enjoyable if ultimately rather conventional male coming-of-age story, set in early 1960s Naples, Montedidio takes the form of brief diary entries by a thirteen-year-old boy who eagerly goes to work as an apprentice carpenter and in the course of a year takes on increasing responsibility and comes to be regarded as a man. He writes in Italian rather than Neapolitan, he says, for the respite it offers from the chaos of the dialect and the city (he was a somewhat sickly child and so went to school longer than most of his peers). His humble and hard-working father still struggles with Italian but he doesn't make him feel bad about it; he enjoys waking up and having breakfast with him, and finally contributing to the small household (he's an only child), but he's left alone when his mother goes into the hospital and his father dedicates himself to her. Each evening after work he ascends to the highest rooftop terrace in the neighborhood, to help out with the laundry but also to think about life and to train with a heavy boomerang given to him by his father. There he comes to know his neighbor Maria, who's no older but has already had a nasty taste of the adult world in the form of the landlord who has been forcing sexual favors from her in exchange for not demanding back rent. Now the narrator is strong enough to protect her, and ready for his own (predictably bewildering but more pleasant) sexual initiation, and they form a partnership against the harsher aspects of the world, while quickly settling into a conventional domestic set-up that their elders may fear proceeds too quickly but otherwise respect.
The other person he spends a lot of time with he calls Don Rafaniello, an old hump-backed, red-headed cobbler and Holocaust survivor, who repairs the shoes of all the poor children of Naples. He's a wise, long-suffering, and proverb-proffering man, who got stuck in Naples after WWII; he wants to travel to Israel and tells the narrator that when his wings emerge from the hump he'll fly home, back to the original "Monte di Dio." The story builds towards New Years Eve, when Rafaniello will fly and the young man will take advantage of the chaos of the evening to finally launch the boomerang from the highest terrace—and the roll of paper he's been writing on will be all used up.
The book is very prettily written in parts, and even genuinely wise, but also often repetitive and overly sentimental (we hear more than enough, for example, about Rafaniello's green eyes). The protagonist is such a humble, dutiful, and respectful son and employee, that he would certainly be a joy to any parent or employer, but he's not a very interesting character. There are already so many Italian boy-becomes-a-man stories available, and if this one doesn't present us with the same indulgent view of sowing wild oats and homosocial bonding, the stolid and sober-before-his-time protagonist of Montedidio is on balance no more compelling.
alenemarie's review
5.0