Accabadora
A Novel
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
One of Elena Ferrante’s “Best 40 books by Female Writers”
This Italian bestseller is a “timeless portrait of village life in Sardinia circa 1950s” as it “tells the story of a young girl adopted by a remarkable woman who stands at the threshold of life and death” (Susan Sherman, author of The Little Russian).
Sardinia, 1950s: Formerly beautiful and at one time betrothed to a fallen soldier, Bonaria Urrai has a long-held covenant with the dead. She is revered and feared in equal measure as the village’s Accabadora, midwife to the dying, easing their suffering—and sometimes ending it.
When Bonaria adopts Maria, the unloved fourth child of a widow, she tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as an angel of mercy. Moved by the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, she breaks her golden rule of familial consent, and in the recriminations that follow, Maria rejects her and flees Sardinia for Turin.
Adrift in the big city, Maria strives as ever to find love and acceptance, but her efforts are overshadowed by the creeping knowledge of a debt unpaid, of a duty and destiny that must one day be hers.
Written with intriguing subtlety, this Italian best-seller has been awarded 7 major literary prizes, including Italy’s prestigious Premio Campiello.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1950s Sardinia, Murgia's lovely English-language debut tells the story of Bonaria Urrai, caretaker of the dying, and the life she tries to give to Maria, the unwanted six-year-old daughter of a widow. In the parlance of the Mediterranean isle, Bonaria is known as the accabadora, a word drawn from the Spanish acabar, which means "to finish or complete"; Maria is a fill'e anima, a "soul-child... born twice," once "from the "poverty of one woman" and again in the care of another. Though Bonaria's role is to comfort those on the cusp of death, she sometimes with familial consent brings about the end for "those who can't bear to suffer anymore." Maria, unaware of her adoptive mother's sideline, takes up dressmaking and eventually attracts the attention of Andr a Bast u, son of local vintners. But when Andr a reveals to Maria that Bonaria killed his crippled brother, a shocked Maria flees to Turin to start another new life. Yet despite Bonaria's secrets, Maria cannot forget her kindness. A touching meditation on life and death and the power of love to bind, transcend, and let go.
