Francesca Melandri

A very nice novel. Apart from some 70 pages (230 -300) where nothing much significant happens, this book gives you a very good impression of a forgotten part in the European history in the small region of Alto Adige / Südtirol, the border between Italy and Austria. I was there for a short while last summer and it's beautiful, quiet and hard to believe that there was a fight, less then 50 years ago, for basic rights such as to speak your mother tongue.
Besides this historical aspect it's a show more novel about love, about being a mother alone, about being the small girl of that mother, about rural harshness but also about the simple life in small communities... Through all these little aspects the book is a very rich story that unfolds slowly through two different timelines.
And then we must not forget the most important story: the search for a long lost love, the lover of the mother, but more important, the never-had father figure, the hero, the ideal image of the little girl on how her life could have, no, should have been. The little girl, in the second timeline herself an adult but still looking for true love, true companionship, her true identity? Question marks all over as she longs for this father that is not, for her roots which stay so important or does she tries to forget about them?
Tragic and beautiful, this aspect of the book should have been much more elaborated for me.
Short: beautiful but could still have been better .... show less

Mir gefällt es wie die Autorin es schafft so viel über die Geschichte des Südtirols in die Geschickte einzuflechten, ohne parteiisch zu werden, und wie sie es schafft zu zeigen, dass manche verhärtete Meinungen mit der Zeit geglättet und vergessen werden können. Die Zeiten ändern sich, und das ist auch gut so. Das Schicksal das einzelnen bekommt in der Verflechtung der Geschichte eine abgemilderte Bedeutung, das Leiden bleicht aus, die Liebe auch, und nur manchmal kommen die Sachen show more hoch und erinnern an was hätte sein können und was wirklich gewesen ist. Das Leben, einmalig und unveränderbar läuft währenddessen unbeirrt weiter, mildert dabei sogar die schlimmsten Gedanken und Handlungen, wie ein warmer Umschlag. show less

A nice novel about a recent Italian history of "revolution" and terrorism, and about violence in general, about high security prisons and the people that are condemned but mostly about the people having to deal with this situation : parents, partners, children. How their life goes on with relatives in jail, how they are confronted more with the damage then the actual emprisoned ones, how they struggle ... or not.
It's hard to find authors better than Melandri to describe the everyday aspects show more of life, the devastating details, the mixed sentiments. An inevitable lovestory mellows the drama, but it ends quite surprising. 3,5 stars for the beautiful sentences, in doubt for star nr 4 but hesitating as the story could have dug deeper but didn't. show less

A bittersweet story of love, romantic and familial, that will charm readers of [Corelli's Mandolin] and other WW2 love stories. It's set in South Tyrol, about an ethnic German woman who has a child out of wedlock, and what happens to that child as she grows up. It's a heartstring-puller for sure.