When asked why she chose to dedicate her new novel “to all survivors”Donatella Di Pietrantonio declares, as a tireless spokesperson for the cause of women: “It may seem trivial, but we all survive something every day. Is this still the case today?”. Through the story of a family chronicle marked by a terrible news story that shook rural Italy in Abruzzo in the 1990s, Donatella Di Pietrantonio paints the portrait of several generations of women fighting for their emancipation. The fragile age was recently rewarded with the Strega and Strega Giovani prizes, equivalent to the Goncourt and Goncourt prizes for high school students, and was published on January 15 by Albin Michel.
The story: Settled in a small poor village in Abruzzo where she was born, Lucia works as a physiotherapist between her old authoritarian father and his daughter Amanda who is continuing her studies in Milan. One day, Amanda returns to settle in the village for good after the attack she suffered one evening a few streets from her Milanese studio. The young girl no longer leaves her room and locks herself in a disturbing silence. Helpless in the face of her daughter’s distress, Lucia is then confronted with painful memories of a tragedy she experienced thirty years previously when two campers were found brutally murdered on a mountain path…
Among the themes that run through this book, which begins as a family story, there is the guilt of Lucia, the narrator, unable to help Amanda recover from the attack she suffered in Milan. A guilt rekindled by another, older one, when in the summer of their 20th birthday, Lucia was unable to find the words for her friend Doralice, survivor of a terrible double feminicide which took place one evening at the mountain campsite. where they spent their summers. This authentic news item from which the novelist draws inspiration haunts the novel, an ancient trauma lurking like a dull shame in the consciousness of the female characters in the story. A feeling very skillfully described by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, so typical of victims of sexual assault. “Every moment of our lives fell into a before or after, without there being any need to mention the drama.” When will women stop feeling guilty? When will shame finally change sides?
Because this is the other question raised by this magnificent novel. Who owns women’s bodies in these rural patriarchal societies where the influence of men weighs, like a block of granite, on generations of girls trained to obey? Here again the writer’s demonstration is clear. Lucia the narrator recognizes him, “my father got the better of my life”exercising its influence “hot and tyrannical” on his actions, without being able, like the other men in the village, to prevent the tragedy from happening. Of course, “no place is safe. The human presence potentially implies that of evil.you still need to be sufficiently psychologically armed to avoid certain traps. In this too, parents owe a debt to their children, not the other way around.
Donatella Di Pietrantonio very finely questions at the end of the novel the responsibilities of a community in the face of the author of the crime, a young isolated shepherd from elsewhere, exploited by the men of the village withdrawn into themselves. She outlines avenues to explain the inexplicable: ” He was a boy of twenty-one, left to his own devices; no connection with his family of origin, and here not even a friend. Day and night in contact with animals, to the point of stupidity. (..) At that age he still needed guidance, and Ciarango was not one, only a boss. Even if he was in control of his actions, Vasile Hirdo was immature, both in terms of his age and his experience. He hadn’t been able to suppress his instincts.” However, as the novel progresses, thanks to the character of Amanda, Lucia’s daughter, a hope will eventually arise in the middle of the Apennines. It is through her that the tragedy, many years later later, will find a form of appeasement in this tormented family, like nature, which “grows back on tragedies and disasters.”
“The fragile age” by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, 254 pages, Albin Michel editions, 20.90 euros.
Extract : “ More or less a year after the tragedy, she found work in a brewery in Quattro Strade. We haven’t seen each other since.(…) She was incapable of staying anywhere at the time, I understood that afterwards. “Wherever I go, I always see her. Do you see her?” She pointed out the mountain to me, this white tooth that from a distance I couldn’t make out. “I see it shining even at night.” I wanted to apologize for all my failings, but I didn’t have the words. Tears came to my eyes, I held them back. She leaned against a low wall, looking at the landscape, feverishly. “How green these meadows are. But underneath, it’s full of maggots, the earth is rotten.” We called her inside, and that day we found ourselves left like that, on the maggots.” (p.52)
