The Girl on the Via Flaminia
-
- 12,99 €
-
- 12,99 €
Publisher Description
An American soldier becomes entangled with a desperate young woman in occupied Rome in this “superb” novel of postwar Italy (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Robert is an American GI in Rome during the final months of World War II. Lisa is a young woman obliged to work in Mamma Adele’s on the Via Flaminia. The passion they feel for one another is fueled by their separate, and equally desperate, needs. But can love truly exist between victor and vanquished?
This classic story of a poignant affair, set amid the aftermath of war, is as relevant and moving today as when it was first published in 1949.
“Keeps us guessing to the end. An enthralling narrative, and art of a high order.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Full of dramatic conflicts . . . The dialogue is the best I have read in any war novel.” —The New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hayes (1911 1985) was a novelist (My Face for the World to See), screenwriter (The Bicycle Thief; Clash by Night) and songwriter ("The Ballad of Joe Hill"). This grim novel of WWII, first published in 1949, opens on the Pulcini family of Rome's Via Flaminia, reduced to poverty after five years of war. They survive by converting their large apartment into a boardinghouse and nightly cafe for occupying American soldiers: bitter, insomniac "Mamma" Adele procures girls for the soldiers, while her vague, ineffectual husband, Ugo, and their seethingly hostile partisan son, Antonio, look on (in indifference and disgust, respectively). Through a departing tenant, lonely American private Robert Guarda arranges live at the Pulcini's with Lisa Costa, an young, blonde Italian woman who hopes to emigrate and whom Robert has never met. They're not married, but allow everyone to assume they are. Robert is bewildered by Italian hostility for the U.S., while Lisa feels increasingly cheapened and angry at his sense of entitlement over her vanquished country. In the end, their arrangement ("She was hungry, I was lonely") results in a sinking, hopeless shame. Hayes musters authentic detail and masterly control in this still-crackling melodrama.
