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Loading... From the Land of the Moon (original 2006; edition 2010)by Milena Agus, Ann Goldstein (Translator)
Work InformationFrom the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus (2006)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Beautifully written story focusing on the years after WWII, of an Italian woman on the island of Sardinia. The story is pieced together by the woman's granddaughter (both are nameless) from things she has been told by her grandmother and by her found journal and a letter after her death. Grandmother was "rescued" from old maidom by a refugee during the war, though she did not love him. Beautiful and voluptuous and ahead of her time in terms of independent thought and a romantic disposition for poetry and love, "the principle thing" Grandmother is a local misfit, though she makes due in her marriage. She is also unable to have a child due to kidney stones, so she goes to the mainland in 195o to a hot springs spa for treatment. There she meets the Veteran, a war hero, who has lost a leg and who shares her love of all things romantic. They become involved and Grandmother finally feels the completion of all her longings and desires. 9 months after she returns home, she gives birth to a son (father to the narrator). A simple tale in terms of action, but complex in terms of emotional involvement, family dynamics and mores of the time. Translates well from the original Italian and the wistfulness can be summed up by the epigraph: "If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack." ( ) Avevo desiderato tanto leggerlo, poi non me ne avevano parlato bene e invece, nonostante sia meno coinvolgente di mentre dorme il pescecane, in cui la caratterizzazione dei personaggi è troppo accentuata, l'ho trovato ben scritto e interessante, finalmente non un noir sardo, un bel romanzo, interessante è l'aggettivo. A short easy read, with an interesting conceit: the narrator explores the personal histories of her parents and grandparents, each story leading by topic rather than chronology on to the next. I do want to read more books using this organisational technique: it fascinates me and I want to figure out how to make it work myself. Unfortunately the stories, or story, itself was a bit slight even for this short text and ultimately forgettable, although there were some enjoyable twists along the way. no reviews | add a review
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-- Kirkus Reviews As this compelling novel opens, a young unnamed woman reflects on the life of her bewitching, eccentric, and fiercely emotional grandmother, whose abiding search for love spans much of the twentieth century. In 1943, as American bombs fall on the city of Cagliari, she is thirty and considered an old maid, still living at home with her parents. But when the bombing ceases, and despite her protests, her father forces her to marry the first man to propose, an older widower she doesn’t love. After suffering several miscarriages, she is sent for treatment at a spa on the mainland, where she falls in love with an injured Italian army veteran. Back home, she gives birth to a son. She never reveals the affair to her husband—but decades later, she returns to the mainland and travels to her former lover’s hometown of Milan. Dressed in her finest coat and shoes, she wanders the streets in search of the elusive veteran . . . Set against a backdrop of rugged mountains and Italian villages lost in time, this international bestselling novel is a multigenerational family saga about love, lust, and country. “Agus’s descriptions of the everyday are as beautiful and haunting as her portrayal of life’s most dramatic episodes. Add an unexpected ending and the result is a graceful, powerful book.” — -- (starred review.) No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)853.92Literature Italian Italian fiction 1900- 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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