If you don't like literature then you should try this book...

books:

	• History: A Novel Elsa Morante Zoland Books, 2000 - 600 pages average customer review:based on 25 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

History: A Revelation

There is so much I love about this book, the best I've read in 2009, and likely one of the best ever. I'll try to cover it all, starting with the title. With the title History: A Novel, Morante's clear message is that history may be driven by ideologues, politicians and generals, but it's lived on the streets by common citizens. Human history is so much more than what appears in history books. This book may be a novel, but it's informed by the truth of millions of stories.

Second, the writing is fantastic. Like Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, the English prose is so beautiful that it's hard to believe that it's a translation (from Italian in this case). Complicated sentence structures, with lots of commas and semi-colons abound, but when you take the time to look back (which often I did), everything fits perfectly. Next, the book's structure allows manageable reading of a long, emotionally draining story. Morante begins each section (each covers one year) with a newsreel-like recap of the military and political events of that year. Each section is divided into seven or eight rather long chapters, almost a fully-realized short story in each case, giving the reader an opportunity to take a break and let things soak in. You'll want to make time to finish each chapter.

I was confused by the nature of the narrator. His/her voice implies some personal presence in the story (moreso than the usual omniscient third person narration), but he/she never is injected directly into the action. The outcome of the story makes it impossible for some kind of family friend or journalist to research and tell the story after the fact. Perhaps the narrator is a sort of watchful, concerned, but daily uninvolved (and in fact not omniscient - he/she freely admits that there are some things that can't be known about the outcome of various characters) God. The nature of the narrative voice may be clearer in Italian. I'd be interested in other readers' thoughts.

Next, the characters - the story revolves around three - "half-breed (Jewish)" widow Iduzza and her sons Nino and Useppe, living primarily as homeless people (their apartment building is bombed out early in the story) in Rome during the Second World War. Nino, Iduzza's son with her late husband, is a teenager when the story begins who becomes a partisan. Idealistic, unpredictable, yet cynical, particularly about government in any form, Nino is a mystery to Iduzza, but that doesn't prevent her from loving him. Young Useppe (shortened from Giuseppe by the youngster's tendency to drop leading syllables from his words) is the product of Iduzza being raped by an anonymous Nazi soldier. Much of the story is told through Useppe's eyes, mind and heart. The perspective reminded me a bit of the great Italian film of the 1990s, Life Is Beautiful. Animals also play a central role in the story as they struggle for both survival and companionship. By the end of the book you may want to seek out a pet more like Useppe's beloved Bella. Late in the book we read more about Davide, a compatriot of Nino's and eventual friend of Useppe's, who battles a multitude of personal demons. His descent is probably the most difficult section of the book to read.

Finally, the story - so touching, so sad, but sprinkled with moments of joy and beauty. This is not a plot-driven novel (no whodunits, no clues to speak of, no coincidental reappearances); just the day-to-day grind of common lives in the most difficult circumstances. As in another of my favorite books about how political history affects common people, Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance (Oprah's Book Club), "History: A Novel" works the balance between joy and misery that is at the epicenter of life during crisis, and of all life at some level. Clearly written from an anti-war perspective (born in 1912, Morante lived through World War II as a young adult), it should be required reading for anyone with the power or inclination to wage war and oppress human beings. Thanks to my Amazon friend Switterbug for recommending Elsa Morante's "History: A Novel". Five intense stars and a strong recommendation to all readers, from older teenagers on up.

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If you don't like literature then you should try this book...

I'm an older guy who reads mostly nonfiction--history, biographies and current events books. I haven't read much literature since my college days 40 years ago. I've been trying to broaden my perspective and found this book on Amazon and was surprised by the unanimous 5-star rating. Trust me, this is a beautiful story and the ending will tear your heart out.

for more information click here

If you don't like literature then you should try this book...

I'm an older guy who reads mostly nonfiction--history, biographies and current events books. I haven't read much literature since my college days 40 years ago. I've been trying to broaden my perspective and found this book on Amazon and was surprised by the unanimous 5-star ratings. Trust me, this is a beautiful story and the ending will tear your heart out.

for more information click here

History A Novel

Excellent book!
I had read the Italian version in high school and loved it. I've just read the novel again in English. The translation from the Italian version is well made.
It's truly worth reading it.

I was moved and saddened, but I just kept reading.

Elsa Morante, the author, lived though WWII in Italy. She has a real understanding of what that was like and she shares this with her readers in quite a profound way. I was moved and saddened. But I just kept reading, and by the end of the book I had developed a deep understanding of the horror of war as it affected the ordinary people.

Ida, a widowed schoolteacher in her thirties, is raped by a young German soldier and as a result gives birth to her second son, Useppe. This is a secret at first but when her 15-year old older son, Nino, discovers this he is delighted with his little brother. Later, Ida's home is destroyed by bombs and she flees to the countryside with her baby and Nino goes off on his own and later appears sporadically. Ida does the best she can to feed and shelter her young son but lives with a special kind of fear because she is one-fourth Jewish and Jews are being deported. Life is difficult; she shares a single room with a dozen other people, food is almost nonexistent and feeding her young son is her only priority. It was hard for me to realize that people actually lived like this.

Throughout the book Nino comes and goes, always adoring his younger brother and disrespecting his mother. He is a passionate young man with a strong appetite for adventure and there is always an atmosphere of danger around his activities. The writer details all of this starkly, and I was drawn into the story and the despair. Sometime she inserts a page or two of basic historical facts about what was going on in the world which brings the whole story into context.

The book spans a few years after the war with returning veterans telling horror stories, little Useppe being ill, and the insane ravings of a companion of Nino who has been mentally damaged by the war. She also introduces a new character, a dog named Bella who becomes Useppe's companion and who she endows with a human's ability to think and describe what is going on around her.

I read every word of this long 738-page book. The ending was sad. I expected that. I was deeply moved. It was a good book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

History was written nearly thirty years after Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia spent a year in hiding among remote farming villages in the mountains south of Rome. There she witnessed the full impact of the war and first formed the ambition to write an account of what history - the great political events driven by men of power, wealth, and ambition - does when it reaches the realm of ordinary people struggling for life and bread.

The central character in this powerful and unforgiving novel is Ida Mancuso, a schoolteacher whose husband has died and whose feckless teenage son treats the war as his playground. A German soldier on his way to North Africa rapes her, falls in love with her, and leaves her pregnant with a boy whose survival becomes Ida's passion.

Around these two other characters come and go, each caught up by the war which is like a river in flood. We catch glimpses of bombing raids, street crimes, a cattle car from which human cries emerge, an Italian soldier succumbing to frostbite on the Russian front, the dumb endurance of peasants who have lived their whole lives with nothing and now must get by with less than nothing.

"One of the few novels in any language that renders the full horror of Hitler's war, the war that never gets into the books . . ."-- Alfred Kazan, Esquire

"A storyteller who spellbinds."-- Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books

"A marvel of a novel . . . all the pleasures that fiction can offer."-- Doris Grumbach, Saturday Review

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