Donatella Di Pietrantonio

A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio is the first translated novella that I've read. Or at least it's the first book I've read that I noticed was translated.

The narrator is never given a name, but we start with her being returned to her first mother when the woman she though was her mother becomes sick. She is thrust into a family that she didn't know existed, who do not have the same economic advantages that mother and father had. The family is already poor, with numerous children, and none of them seem eager to have her there, especially since it means another mouth to feed.

The novella doesn't have one storyline that goes throughout the book, except that she is trying to fit in and just make it through. Every chapter is a different memory from her life with first mother and the family, as she tries to figure out her place in their world. She did become close to her sister Adriana, and her oldest brother Vincenzo, but the rest of the family never really bothered with her.

All in all, a moving novella about a girl torn between two lives, trying to find her way in a new home with a new family.… (more)

3.5⭐️

“Adriana knew how to bring me back, to all that I had wanted to leave.”

In Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s A Sister’s Story we revisit our unnamed protagonist her younger sister Adriana, from the author’s previous novel , A Girl Returned. Our narrator, once raised by relatives but returned to her birth parents at the age of thirteen has always felt like an outsider among her siblings and parents. Adriana, her sister, younger than her by three years was the only person to whom she was close and who was protective of her. Our narrator has strived and has been successful in charting a path for herself that enabled her to break away from her working-class upbringing. As the story begins she is now teaching literature at a university in Grenoble. She is interrupted by a phone call in the middle of a class and immediately decides to travel back home to the coastal city of Pescara in the Abruzzo region of Italy, where Adriana is now fighting for her life after being seriously injured after falling from the terrace of her home in Borgo Sud, the fisherman’s village where she was living with her sixteen year old son.

“As children we were inseparable, then we had learned to lose each other.”

The narrator, once married (now divorced) to a dentist belonging to an influential family at the age of twenty-five, recalls an incident that occurred three years into her marriage , when her frantic sister arrived at her doorstep late in the night with her infant son. Running from debtors who were owed money by Rafael, a fisherman with whom Adriana had been romantically involved with since she was fifteen, she turned to her sister and her husband for help for herself and her nine-month-old son Vincenzo who she has named after their deceased older brother.

“Adriana is an opportunist by instinct, not by calculation. She makes use of those who can be useful to her, preserving a kind of innocence, a childlike candor. She understands that you can use her in the same way.”

A Sister’s Story by Donatella Di Pietrantonio is a short but intense novel that revolves around the complicated, dysfunctional but unbreakable bond between sisters – two individuals who could not be more different but who find shelter, solace and comfort with each other in their darkest moments. In the course of her journey, through the narrator’s memories, we get to know more about the significant events that have marked the lives of the two sisters and how their relationship has evolved through the years – their childhood marked by abuse and neglect, their attempts to escape their life of economic hardship and their dysfunctional family, their shared grief, their respective relationships and the loss and heartbreaks they face, their long gaps with no contact and their dependence on each other in their moments of need. In Adriana and her sister, the author creates two distinctive personalities- Adriana and our narrator are both strong willful women who have faced life’s challenges with grit and determination. As with their personalities, their life trajectories are in stark contrast. However, despite their differences what remains intact is their will to survive and the bond they share.

“With my sister I shared a legacy of words not said, gestures omitted, care denied. And rare, unexpected kindnesses. We were daughters of no mother. We are still, as always, two girls who ran away from home.”

I am glad that the author continued the story of the two sisters. I loved that we got to know more about Adriana, who was such a compelling character in the previous novel. I did, however, feel that the narrative was a tad lacking in emotional depth as compared to A Girl Returned . I also found the non-linear narrative a bit confusing as the narrator’s memories jump between timelines abruptly. But despite its flaws, this is a beautifully written novel with superb characterizations.

I strongly recommend reading Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s A Girl Returned before reading this book as the backstory of the characters is necessary to fully appreciate the significance of the events described in this novel.… (more)

4.5⭐️

On an August afternoon in 1975, a thirteen-year-old girl (our narrator) drags a suitcase up the stairs to an apartment belonging to her biological parents. She is 'returned' to her family by her adoptive parents, the only family she has ever known and whom she believed to be her true parents. This family, this apartment just a bus ride away from her seaside home and her new siblings are all alien to her. This family is related to her adoptive father and she was adopted by Signora Adalgisa when she was an infant of six months – an arrangement mutually agreed upon by both sets of parents. The circumstances surrounding her 'return' remain a mystery to her. She worries for the health of her adoptive mother. Is she sick? Is she even alive? Will she ever return to the safe, happy cocoon that was once her home? She is thrust into a life completely different from the one she was accustomed to -an only child, living in a seaside community with loving parents, friends, dance classes and wanting for nothing. Here she becomes part of a dysfunctional family plagued by poverty and abusive dynamics within. Her parents mostly ignore her with her mother expecting her to be well versed in household chores including plucking a chicken, her older brothers taunt and bully her except for the eighteen-year-old Vincenzo whose interest in her leads to some uncomfortable moments.

“I wasn’t acquainted with hunger and I lived like a foreigner among the hungry. The privilege I bore from my earlier life distinguished me, isolated me in the family. I was the arminuta, the one who’d returned. I spoke another language and I no longer knew who I belonged to.”

Adriana, her younger sister and Guiseppe, her youngest brother who has a developmental disability are the only two people she connects with, a connection that continues into her adulthood, details of which she gives brief glimpses of as she narrates these incidents from a timeline twenty year in the future. She shares how she is unable to connect with her “parents”- a disconnect that continues throughout her narrative referring to them as “the mother” and “the father”. When tragedy strikes the family “the mother” retreats into herself further.

“In time I lost that confused idea of normality, too, and today I really don’t know what place a mother is. It’s absent from my life the way good health, shelter, certainty can be absent. It’s an enduring emptiness, which I know but can’t get past. My head whirls if I look inside it. A desolate landscape that keeps you from sleeping at night and constructs nightmares in the little sleep it allows. The only mother I never lost is the one of my fears.”

As the story progresses and the reasons for her abandonment by her adoptive mother are revealed, her world is once again turned upside down and our protagonist is compelled to question the very definition of motherhood and family. The protagonist’s loneliness, confusion and inner turmoil in her darkest moments are palpable and will break your heart.

A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio (translated by Ann Goldstein), is a sad, moving and powerful novel that explores the themes of family, coming-of-age, trust, abandonment and resilience. The author’s strength lies in her characterizations and the realistic depiction of complex relationships.

A character that stands out in our narrator's story is Adriana, her younger sister. Accustomed to the hardships of life and the abusive environment in their home, Adriana, only ten years old and still wetting the bed welcomes her older sister, is both protective and possessive of her at school and at home, even willing to take the blows directed towards her by their mother in moments of rage. Initially, our narrator is embarrassed by her sister’s lack of fine manners, her shabby appearance and her rustic diction and there are moments of friction and resentment from Adriana’s side as well but as time progresses she becomes the only person our protagonist can truly rely on, her only light in the darkness.

“My sister. Like an improbable flower, growing in a clump of earth stuck in the rock. From her I learned resistance. We look less like each other now, but we find the same meaning in this being thrown into the world. In our alliance we survived.”

The writing is unambiguous and elegant and the narrative is sharp and well-paced, laced with real emotions without exaggeration or melodrama with its share of memorable characters (some likable and some not so much) - all of which render this a compelling read. This is a short novel and I felt invested in the lives of our narrator and her sister Adriana. I wanted to know more about their lives. In other words, I did not want the story to end. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time. I look forward to reading more of Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s work in the future.

(Readers should note that Vincenzo’s behavior towards the protagonist borders on incestuous, which may upset some readers, though this angle is not developed beyond a certain point in the story and thankfully, does not feature as a running theme but is used to depict one of the dysfunctional situations the protagonist is exposed to in her new home.)… (more)