Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
"What matters in a dictatorship is the dictator, and the dictator can change his mind in the blink of an eye.", 14 Sep 2009
In 1967, an unnamed writer begins writing a long letter to an unknown recipient in Italy, a letter he knows will take weeks to conclude. The writer establishes early in his letters that his home is in Israel, in Tel Aviv, but there are no clues about the person being addressed. In a straightforward, conversational style, the writer describes his early years, when he was a shy, serious student growing up in Rome, where his parents owned an elegant small hotel, Albergo della Magnolia. In 1929, when he is in his early twenties, he is on duty at the hotel for New Year's Eve when beautiful, young Sonia Gentile falls and breaks her leg at a party there. During her recuperation, Sonia receives the writer's special attention, and it is not long before they are in love.
Sonia has grown up under fascism as the daughter of a wealthy banker who supports Mussolini's policies and profits from them, and her family is devoutly Catholic. The speaker, whom we learn is Dino Carpi, has been only a "twice a year Jew," on Yom Kippur and Passover, and he ignores the then-"unimportant" cultural differences to pursue his love of Sonia. His family is comfortable and well respected, and he is anxious to be accepted by her family, even denying his own culture toward that end.
As Dino writes about the ensuing ten years, he moves from the promise of the 1929 New Year through the "funereal year" of 1938, addressing and bringing alive the step by step process by which Mussolini and the fascists appeal to an inherent Italian bias against Jews and bring about their total isolation from Italian life. The plain, unadorned narrative achieves its power from its simplicity--its seeming logic--and from the naivete of the love-blinded characters, as one ominous fascist declaration after another is glossed over, no one believing that such policies are really as draconian as they may appear. As polite handshakes give way to salutes, Levi explores the love story of Sonia and Dino, but when in 1938, the government issues the Manifesto of Racist Scientists, in which a "pure Italian race" is lauded--and Jews "do not belong to the Italian race"--the inevitability of the fascist goals are clear.
Author Lia Levi creates enormous sympathy for her protagonists, in part because the threats to their safety occur so gradually. The issues are not complex, and the characters do not react to them as if they are--in most cases, they simply ignore them, completely caught up in their day-to-day lives. The conclusion, however, is stunning, powerful despite its inevitability, simply because the protagonists did not expect it or believe it, despite all the warnings. And though the reader knows, from history, what the outcome will be, it is impossible not to hope for a different result because the characters deserve better. The last pages, which resolve any questions the reader may have, are poignant for the feelings they reveal by and about the characters and for the sympathy they inspire in the reader. Filled with wonderfully observed descriptions, this deliberately simple story is all the more powerful for its clarity and its unambiguous presentation of everyday life in pre-war Italy, a subject which has received little literary attention. n Mary Whipple
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