Group Read, July 2016: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Our July Group Read is Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Please join the read and post any comments on this thread.

After getting off to a tough start (seemed to assume you knew an awful lot about seating arrangements at the synagogues of different nationalities) this book has become lovely and melancholy. Is anybody else reading?

I will be, in a few days.

I am waiting for my copy to arrive. Hopefully the pending mail strike here in Canada doesn't mess with its arrival...

I read this a few years ago, and now struggling to recall the specifics but I remember the concept and the haunting mood.

Picked up my copy at the library last night but I have a few more books to read before I delve into it.

I finished the first two parts and agree on the melancholy in the author's writing. I feel it all the time, as well as the threat of WWII, lingering in the background. The innocence of the main characters, their unavoidable destiny; even after so many books on the subject, it still makes me shiver.

I'm almost through and it's interesting. As far as I can determine, neither the narrator nor the reader truly understands what has happened, and the tragedy is that nothing can ever be resolved. I have some theories about what's "really" happening but I don't even know if the author intended them. But I really love the effort. Micol is as vivid, lively, and quirky as an Italian Anne Frank. The way that her life flicks out so abruptly (you know this from the beginning, not a spoiler) is terrible.

>8 annamorphic: I finished it and am really curious what your theories are. Can you share your thoughts here?

SLIGHT SPOILERS

Well, I thought that Micol's brother Alberto was in love with Malnate, and that his failure in that relationship was registered by his sudden criticism of the great Malnate one day, and also by Malnate's fulmination against homosexuality. I was also not convinced that Micol had anything going with Malnate, although possibly Malnate had hopes in that direction. Nothing ever really connects between any two people in any fulfilling way, and I suspect that that sense of unrealization is kind of the point -- how life goes on, is interrupted, ends, nothing is finished, nothing is known.

I have to admit I never thought of the posdibility that Alberto would be in love with Malnate. I didn't know what to make of Alberto anyhow. Interesting theory.

You mention thetragedy of nothing being resolved for the narrator as well as the reader. Beside this being tragic I also see it as a strong point of the book. I guess the narrator didn't want to know what was going on exactly at the time he visited the Finzi-Continis.
For example, who was Micol talking to on the telephone the time he visited her room? Malnate? He never asked.

Good point. The narrator has been telling a lot of stories to himself about these people rather than getting the real information (by asking questions) to figure things out. And then the information stops altogether.

Yes and I think the author wants to show that the narrator has been going over these memories over and over again after the war. His memories may have changed over the years, which make them a bit vague (I don't know if this is the English word I am looking for) to us as readers.

My copy is Modern Classics traslated by Jamie McKendrick. Is the translator different for different editions? I haven't yet decided if I think this translation is bad or if it is just that the text is difficult to translate. Any thoughts?

I have now finished this book. In relation to my last post I decided that the translation was pretty good but that the text style was somewhat difficult. However, I did enjoy it and thought it was beautifully tragic. Since we know from the beginning that Micol and all the family didn't survive the war we know the ending is going to be tragic. I didn't quite expect it to unfold as it did.
>10 annamorphic: I too had a suspicion that there was a homosexual relationship between Alberto and Malnate but never decided for sure.
As to whether Micol and Malnate had an affair I lean to saying no. I don't think Micol had much in the way of sexual urges and, if she had, then I think the narrator would have been more her type than Malnate.