The new author recounts the friendship between two girls in fascist Italy in a novel (Einaudi Stile libero) already sold in 32 countries
It tells of a visceral and absolute friendship, as only childhood knows, against the violent and sexist background of the fascist dictatorship in the years of the Abyssinian war. The Malnata (Einaudi Stile libero), a happy debut by twenty-six-year-old Beatrice Salvioni, published simultaneously in several European countries and being translated overseas. In the frequent furrow of the exploration of childhood and adolescence as well as of friendship affinities, which in the narrative of recent years has decreed the successes among others of theArminuta and ofBrilliant friendthe young writer builds a story of personal and civil training with an unprecedented and convincing voice, gives life to a fresco of characters in chiaroscuro tones and a well-oiled narrative device, characterized by a sharp writing and by the effectiveness of the dialogues. The novel’s opening scene worthy of a thriller: in Monza, on the banks of the Lambro, two half-naked and wounded girls are busy hiding the corpse of a young man whose shirt shows a brooch with the bundle. It’s 1936, but that cinematic shot opens up to a long flashback that gives an account of what happened in the previous year.
To tell Francesca Strada, a twelve-year-old of the good Monza bourgeoisie: oppressed in a world of rules that must not be broken she shuts herself in the wardrobe to shout her unhappiness and every day she watches with envy from the bridge over the Lambro the reckless games of a girl of the same age in the company of two boys, Matteo and Filippo, one of the two sons of the hierarch Roberto Colombo, a arrogant man who medals obtained in battles never fought. She has long wanted to become friends with her, but she knows well that Maddalena, for all the Malnata, an outcast, accused by petty popular superstition of hurling curses and sowing death, so much so that even she ended up convincing herself of it. Until on a day of celebration in June 1935 Maddalena leads her to her first transgression: a theft of cherries, a modern reinterpretation of that of the pears of a famous episode of the Confessions of Saint Augustine, thus seals the beginning of a bond destined to experience various estrangements and to consolidate more strongly with each reconciliation.
In a world of only two certainties, according to which the inexplicable comes from God or the devil and is never the fault of males, through a series of initiatory tests, from that moment Francesca earns the trust and affection of Maddalena, who accompanies her in the transition to adolescence, reveals the dark face of fascism and the importance of words. She in turn measures progressively one’s ability to rebel and evade parental control, between a mother busy poring over fashion magazines hidden under the mattress and a father wholly concentrated on work and unable to stand up to his wife, she overcomes her fear of her mother’s constant admonitions to behave like a decent girl and descends on those muddy banks with boundless admiration for Maddalena, a rough character but capable of imprinting himself vividly on the reader’s mind.
Raised too soon between family misfortunes and the prejudices of fellow citizens, entrenched behind her I’m not afraid that Francesca tries to make her own, the mentality of an adult in the body of a child, strong yet very fragile, object of the wickedness of her peers who have identified her as the sacrificial victim, Maddalena imposes herself in her stubborn fight against bullying and in her authentic outbursts towards those she loves. Alongside the celebration of friendship, the denunciation of squad violence, the perverse oppression against the weak in a backward-minded society, the disturbances of adolescence, the meta-narrative suggestion on the importance of words make room.
Meanwhile, around the two girls moves a crowd of supporting characters, at times Manichean incarnations of good and evil, and the adult world reveals hypocrisy and wickedness, divided between those forced to suffer the arrogance of the regime and those who impose it, in the empty rhetoric of obedience to the Duce and the country. La Malnata stands out, returned through the adoring gaze of Francesca, who lives with her an elective affinity out of the ordinary and in her friend’s family knows the warmth and joy of sharing, while a double game is consumed within the walls of her house of which he only belatedly becomes aware.
In the meantime, the story begins one of the too many dark pages of those years, the young people are recruited to the sound of vulgar fascist propaganda and even theThe microcosm of the two girls crashes. Malnata’s brother leaves as a soldier and her sister, abandoned by the eldest of the Colombos, from whom she is expecting a child and who has reached out to Francesca, attempts suicide. Maddalena wants revenge, but fate gets in the way and the consequences of her action are announced terrible. But Francesca this time has learned the lesson of courage and the value of words.
The author and the volume: the TV series is also on the way
The novel by Beatrice Salvioni, La Malnata, published by Einaudi Stile libero (248 pages, €17.50). She is the author born in Monza in 1995. Graduated in modern philology from the Catholic University of Milan, in 2021 she graduated from the Scuola Holden in Turin and won the Calvino prize for unpublished stories with “The night flight of severed languages”. La Malnata is her first novel: it has already been sold in 32 countries. Just released, simultaneously with Italy, in France, Spain, Greece, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Bulgaria, it will soon also arrive in Germany and the United States. And a TV series will be based on the book.
March 29, 2023 (change March 29, 2023 | 12:01)
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