Rombo
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
In May and September 1976, two earthquakes ripped through north-eastern Italy, causing severe damage to the landscape and its population. About a thousand people died under the rubble, tens of thousands were left without shelter, and many ended up leaving their homes in Friuli forever.
The displacement of material as a result of the earthquakes was enormous. New terrain was formed that reflects the force of the catastrophe and captures the fundamentals of natural history. But it is far more difficult to find expression for the human trauma, the experience of an abruptly shattered existence.
In Rombo, Esther Kinsky's sublime new novel, seven inhabitants of a remote mountain village talk about their lives, which have been deeply impacted by the earthquake that has left marks they are slowly learning to name. From the shared experience of fear and loss, the threads of individual memory soon unravel and become haunting and moving narratives of a deep trauma.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Named for the Calabrian term for the low rumble that precedes earthquakes, Kinsky's experimental and somewhat rocky outing follows seven Italians from rural Friuli as they recount their lives before and after two devastating earthquakes. Intercut with asides on local plants, birds, and folklore, the resulting pastiche melds the voices of people, nature, and the earth itself into a single chorus. The result is somewhat unfocused, if brilliantly evocative. Despite the multiperspective narration, the speakers are for the most part indistinguishable; without dialogue or identifiable speaking styles, their first-person accounts of growing up in rural poverty (gathering hay in mountain valleys, absentee parents and partners at work abroad) blend together. Kinsky halts the narrative with meandering descriptions of nearby Mount Canin's chalky faces; the soft, variable colors of limestone; and the local white mountain garlic. Readers willing to contain their interest in traditional storytelling—and to weather the occasionally repetitive interlude—will savor Kinsky's poetic and dreamlike scenes: a child lulled to sleep by the sounds of a nearby gravel quarry; young shepherds catching vipers in glass jars. Though it can be tedious, it's hard to deny the beauty of Kinsky's elegantly wrought sketchbook of rural life.
