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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
something about this book really touched me and i have a feeling it will stay in the back of my mind for a long time - a really touching book on grief, loss and moving on
emotional
relaxing
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
sad
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
An exquisitely written lyrical story that's melancholic.
Lettura di aprile per il club del libro di Napoli: ha raccolto tutt'altro che pareri unanimi. Partiamo dal presupposto che "Addio fantasmi" non è un libro che è necessario leggere, almeno a mio avviso. Ha parecchi difetti, che a mio avviso hanno più a che fare con la struttura della trama che con lo stile, perché quello conserva qualcosa di particolare che mi ha lasciato un'impressione di una lettura tutto sommato scorrevole e piacevole. "Addio fantasmi" vuole indagare il solco di un trauma e la sua risoluzione, ma risulta macchinoso, artificioso, forse perché la risoluzione del trauma, che sembra arrivare attraverso un percorso forse troppo psicanalizzato, giunge poi improvvisamente e in un momento 'catartico' poco giustificabile. Altro non si può dire senza spoilerare.
reflective
sad
Was für ein schmerzlicher Roman. Die gesamte Geschichte von Ida, sowohl ihre Kindheits- und Jungenderinnerungen als auch die Reise in ihre Heimatstadt Messina, ist blau eingefärbt von der unvollendeten Trauer um ihren Vater. Dieser lag lange Zeit mit Depressionen im Bett und verschwand als Ida 13 Jahre alt war. Seine Abwesenheit begleitet die Protagonistin und scheint sie mehr als alles andere zu beschäftigen. Wie sie diesen Verlust vielleicht endlich verarbeiten und Abschied nehmen kann, beschreibt Nadia Terranova, übersetzt von Esther Hansen, in einer Sprache, die oft lyrisch und berührend, an anderen Stellen aber auch etwas zu (bedeutungs-)schwer anmutet. Eindrücklich ist dabei, wie sie eine komplizierte Mutter-Tochter-Beziehung verhandelt und insbesondere die Diskrepanz zwischen Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmung Idas kommt gegen Ende klar zum Vorschein in einer Szene, die mir von allen vermutlich am nächsten ging. Ich habe allgemein nichts gegen Traumszenen, doch während einige von den "Nachtstücken" schöne oder beunruhigende Bilder hervorgerufen haben, blieben andere mir eher fern. Die Beschreibungen der Umgebung und des Essens haben jedoch eine große Sehnsucht nach Sizilien ausgelöst. Das deutsche Cover spiegelt die Stimmung des Romans wieder, besonders die Farbe Blau passt einfach unglaublich gut, jedoch gefällt mir das englische am Besten von allen. Auch der Titel Farewell, Ghosts ist sehr treffend. Insgesamt ein sprachlich interessantes und berührendes Leseerlebnis.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Suicide, Grief, Death of parent
Moderate: Infertility, Abortion
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Farewell, Ghosts by Nadia Terranova (translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein) was one of my women in translation month reads in August.
This is a novel about mother-daughter relationships. It’s about returning to a place that is stilted in time, unchanged yet decaying, while you yourself have irrevocably changed in an attempt to disentangle yourself, disassociate the memories – you can no longer call this place 'home'.
The protagonist, Ida, has created a life for herself with her husband in Rome, but is called back to her childhood home in Messina, Sicily by her mother. As she wanders through the uncomfortably familiar hallways of the crumbling house and sifts through her old things, Ida reflects upon her earlier life here, crucially the disappearance of her father. When she was thirteen, her depressed father left the house in the morning at 6:16am and never returned.
This abandonment is at the heart of the novel: the father is a haunting (un)presence like that of the island's suffocating heat, a reminder of the fragility of human life, and both an intangible connection and a separation between mother and daughter. The writing is lyrical and poetic, but brutally reflective and embittered, like picking at a bleeding scab, only wounding further, never healing. For me, it was a personally painful meditation.
A few saved passages...
"I wake with mites in my lungs. Anxiety or asthma, I shouldn't have agreed to sleep here, returning is always a mistake. Dust or sea air, I can't breathe. I went to sleep too early. I'm a grown woman pinned to the darkness by her childhood dolls."
"Memory is a creative act: it chooses, constructs, decides, excludes; the novel of memory is the purest game we have."
"I wasn't pretty, but I was something else, my body had listened to my mother, or, simply, she had known because she had already gone through it: sooner or later everyone comes out of childhood, my mother had received the instructions before me, she knew how it worked. I emerged with difficulty from a compendium of protuberances--bony nose, teeth straightened with metal braces, point knees and elbows--and the mirror gave back a new image, the polished version of a possible aspect: mine. My mother had predicted it."
"Of our quarrels there remained neither bones not dust [...] Tearing each other to pieces was a form of intimacy and for that reason we welcome it, rather than not know intimacy at all. When we found ourselves alone and felt the itch that would cause us to explode, we experienced the intoxication of the transitory [...] we awaited not love but the fight."
"I construct other existences and new stories. I carve out a parallel world in which voices, bodies, and names are in motion, well articulated, divided into syllables, and concrete. My imagination has no limits: it's not true."
"The scene is in the present tense, the tense of nightmares, of insomnia, of obsession, the eternal tense that the past crowds in."
"I see crowds of people who have passed through death and emerged damaged, disturbed, but the same. We're all coming from a funeral [...] we've all lost someone."
This is a novel about mother-daughter relationships. It’s about returning to a place that is stilted in time, unchanged yet decaying, while you yourself have irrevocably changed in an attempt to disentangle yourself, disassociate the memories – you can no longer call this place 'home'.
The protagonist, Ida, has created a life for herself with her husband in Rome, but is called back to her childhood home in Messina, Sicily by her mother. As she wanders through the uncomfortably familiar hallways of the crumbling house and sifts through her old things, Ida reflects upon her earlier life here, crucially the disappearance of her father. When she was thirteen, her depressed father left the house in the morning at 6:16am and never returned.
This abandonment is at the heart of the novel: the father is a haunting (un)presence like that of the island's suffocating heat, a reminder of the fragility of human life, and both an intangible connection and a separation between mother and daughter. The writing is lyrical and poetic, but brutally reflective and embittered, like picking at a bleeding scab, only wounding further, never healing. For me, it was a personally painful meditation.
A few saved passages...
"I wake with mites in my lungs. Anxiety or asthma, I shouldn't have agreed to sleep here, returning is always a mistake. Dust or sea air, I can't breathe. I went to sleep too early. I'm a grown woman pinned to the darkness by her childhood dolls."
"Memory is a creative act: it chooses, constructs, decides, excludes; the novel of memory is the purest game we have."
"I wasn't pretty, but I was something else, my body had listened to my mother, or, simply, she had known because she had already gone through it: sooner or later everyone comes out of childhood, my mother had received the instructions before me, she knew how it worked. I emerged with difficulty from a compendium of protuberances--bony nose, teeth straightened with metal braces, point knees and elbows--and the mirror gave back a new image, the polished version of a possible aspect: mine. My mother had predicted it."
"Of our quarrels there remained neither bones not dust [...] Tearing each other to pieces was a form of intimacy and for that reason we welcome it, rather than not know intimacy at all. When we found ourselves alone and felt the itch that would cause us to explode, we experienced the intoxication of the transitory [...] we awaited not love but the fight."
"I construct other existences and new stories. I carve out a parallel world in which voices, bodies, and names are in motion, well articulated, divided into syllables, and concrete. My imagination has no limits: it's not true."
"The scene is in the present tense, the tense of nightmares, of insomnia, of obsession, the eternal tense that the past crowds in."
"I see crowds of people who have passed through death and emerged damaged, disturbed, but the same. We're all coming from a funeral [...] we've all lost someone."
Romanzo di narrativa (italiana) di impostazione e canovaccio classici che piu' classici non si puo'. E proprio per questo e' senza infamia e senza lode. Alcuni temi qui riproposti da innumerevoli altri romanzi, come la rimpatriata, i rapporti persi con parenti e vecchi conoscenti, forse un po' stufano quando costituiscono quasi tutto quello che il romanzo ha da offrire. Ma in fin dei conti non e' per niente terribile e si fa leggere, complice anche un'ambientazione non proprio usuale e resa benino, e il fatto che non ci propini in modo marcato le solite tematiche di problematicita' dei romanzi anglosassoni (si', c'e' sempre sullo sfondo la scomparsa del padre, ma e' gestita tutto sommato bene e senza nessuna esagerazione "all'americana"). Per tutti questi motivi non lo ritengo da cinquina allo Strega, e mi meraviglierei molto se vincesse.