Death in Sicily
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Exploring the complex social pressures in a small Sicilian community in 1963, this novel describes the effects of the death of La Mennulata on the family she has served so long. Her death is a source of great gossip amongst her neighbours and fellow villagers and sparks a desperate search by the Alfallipe family as they try to collect their inheritance. It is a novel to be read on a beautiful summer's evening with a glass of white wine in the other hand. The writing evokes the intimacies of a rural society and creates a web of memorable characters but perhaps needs a stronger narrator, a sense of the author's voice that we can feel closer to. In places, I found myself checking to see if we had already met a particular character.
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A walk down my land
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I've read the book "The Almond Picker" in Italian, being Italian and more specifically Sicilian myself. I loved it!!!
Every single page, the Sicilian sayings that are written in a language so ancient that most of the time they were obscure to me, made me miss being in my homeland, although I cannot live there anymore for the same reasons that I miss it so much. I missed my father as well; he would have been able to help me when my knowledge of the language faltered, he would have appreciated it as well.
It is such a true novel...it describes what it means to be Sicilian. It tells you about the Sicily of yesterday, but it many ways it is true about the Sicily of today and probably how Sicily will be tomorrow. There is no escape!! Not for us Sicilians. All changes, without changing at all.
Agnello Hornby captures all these Sicilian pecularities. And in a memorable way.
Please read The Marchesa as well, if you are fascinated by the history of Sicily.
A true and worthy successor of Tommasi di Lampedusa.
PS: I will keep reading Agnello Hornby in Italian, though, my mother tongue.
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Simply brilliant!
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I've just finished my copy in Italian(/Sicilian) of this fantastic novel. I wish there was a number 2 in the shops for me to buy. I need to read more of it.
It is a colourful mirror over the life in a village in the Sicily of the 1960s'. It's vivid with social, cultural and historical descriptions and details. The pen of Simonetta Agnello Hornby keeps you curious and loaded with questions until the very end. You'll go though its pages like you'd drink a glass of cola: it goes down easy, yet has got enough bubbles to tickle you mouth and as soon as you finished it you want more. Enjoy!
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