The Anniversary
A Novel
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- € 9,99
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“A book that confronts the purity of fact, the tyranny of memory, and the totalitarianism of family like no other.” —Jhumpa Lahiri
A subtle yet heartrending portrait of an abusive marriage in patriarchal Italy and a son’s liberating decision to cut contact with his parents.
Can you leave your family behind? Can you slam the door, walk down the stairs, and decide never to see them again? Can you ever escape the grip of your origins?
A son asks himself these questions as he celebrates a bittersweet anniversary: a decade since he saw his parents. Now he finally feels able to tell their story. This is his eloquent account of a family devastated by a father’s violence and the woman who silently accepts him; of an airless relationship, unsettled only by the ringing of a telephone, a visiting classmate, or a friend soon pushed away. And it is the story of a son possessed by the irrepressible desire to be free: to be himself, to live his own life, to open up to others without fear of reprisals.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The narrator of this poignant Strega Prize–winning novel from Bajani (The Book of Homes) traces the causes and effects of his father's physical and emotional abuse on his family. It opens with the unnamed narrator recounting his last visit to his parents in a Turin suburb, when he was 41. Remarking on the "impregnable wall" he built after breaking off contact with his parents following that visit, he confesses that the time since then has been "the best ten years of my life." From there, he reveals how his mother became passive and indifferent, describing the "faint limp" she has from a childhood case of polio and the years of control by his father, who exiled the family from Rome to the small suburb, leaving her isolated. The father, who occasionally beat his wife and two children, mounted psychological tyrannies such as limiting their phone calls. Gradually, the narrator reveals that his paternal grandmother's descent from upper middle to lower class contributed to his father's frustration and anger. Through therapy, begun after the estrangement, the narrator begins to untangle his place in the family saga, and he eventually feels liberated. Bajani writes masterfully of the confusion that marked the narrator's early life, as well as the sadness that comes with the truth. The result is cathartic.
