March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010
August 2010
September 2010 October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022 December 2022 January 2023 February 2023 March 2023 April 2023 May 2023 June 2023 July 2023 August 2023 September 2023 October 2023 November 2023 December 2023 January 2024 February 2024 March 2024
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29
30
31
News Every Day |

Unnurtured and Unloved: On Andrea Bajani’s “If You Kept a Record of Sins”

IN HIS HAUNTING 2007 NOVEL If You Kept a Record of Sins, now available in a lovely English translation by Elizabeth Harris, Italian author Andrea Bajani shows his distaste for false sentimentalities and his attraction to raw uncomfortable truths. He understands the harm we are capable of inflicting upon one another. His narration often purposefully stumbles between past and present to show us the circular agony of his narrator Lorenzo’s recurring thoughts. Lorenzo speaks in a piercing first-person voice laced with yearning and regret. He is now a grown man but still a man-child; abandoned by his mother decades ago when he was not yet 10, he was left in the care of his quiet and broken-hearted stepfather. The pair formed a makeshift family and tried to summon the strength to move forward.

The story begins when Lorenzo finds out about his mother’s death and flies to Romania for her funeral. His stepdad tells him that he is unable to come. Lorenzo has never been to Romania, a place he equates with his mother’s desertion and thus has an instinctive mistrust for. She left Italy with her business partner and lover, Anselmi, decades ago with the hope of making a small fortune on a weight-loss gimmick: an enormous egg that subjects its users to a vigorous shaking purportedly to help them lose weight. She had once placed Lorenzo inside it and closed the lid tight, laughing at his terror and humiliation. She and Anselmi would drink and kiss in front of him, pretending it was all a harmless charade. He knew without her having to tell him that he was not to mention any of this to his stepdad, who seemed oblivious to her growing infatuation with her business partner.

Upset at the news of his mother’s death, Lorenzo debates whether to attend her funeral. His stepfather encourages him to go, explaining that, after all, she was his mother. But was she? The novel seems to equivocate a bit on this. She was certainly not a mother in any traditional sense of the word: an attractive, ambitious woman consumed by her desire to make some sort of splash on the world stage, she never really considered her son’s needs. By contrast, his stepfather was a kind and generous man; Lorenzo remembers with fondness how, after his mother had left, the man would place a hand on his head to comfort him: “The feel of his hand stayed with me, that tough skin, a hand that seemed on loan, it was so disconnected from that gentle, averted face.” His mother’s absence, however, has drained his stepfather; he is no longer the man he once was. His availability to his son is sincere but limited. As a result, Lorenzo has become accustomed to his essential aloneness, even taking pleasure in it, thinking of solitude as an impenetrable force field. The trip to Romania for his mother’s funeral would threaten this status quo.

Before his mother departed for good, she would leave for extended trips, returning from these excursions excited, her luggage stuffed with toys for him. They would spend an evening or two playing together, but her affection seemed forced. Though her eyes were always smiling, he refused to look at them, scared that she would see the growing rage in his own. He understood that her visits were merely a torturous mirage, teasing him and prolonging a separation that would soon be final. Her gestures seemed empty and cruel, her obliviousness to his suffering intolerable.

When Lorenzo arrives in Romania, he meets his mother’s chauffeur, Christian, whom he instinctively likes, drawn to the man’s kind eyes that looked “like candies in paper wrappers, wrinkles radiating from the edges.” Christian expresses sorrow for the loss of Lorenzo’s mother, but the young man is only half-listening. He is often oblivious to the world that surrounds him. Wherever he is, it’s as if he is really somewhere else — perhaps looking for mama’s ghost, the woman he remembers from long ago. Bajani seems to understand that this disconnection is the fatal inheritance of the unnurtured and unloved.

Lorenzo soon meets Anselmi, for whom his antagonism is instantly rekindled. The man is loud, vulgar, and insensitive, treating his Romanian workers with a smug elitism Lorenzo finds distasteful. Anselmi’s new girlfriend, Monica, is young and fearful and seems to be flirting with Lorenzo for reasons he can’t fathom. Monica has been put in charge of making Lorenzo’s stay as comfortable as possible, but she has the opposite effect on him. She jumps nervously every time her cell phone rings, and Anselmi treats her harshly. Some strange intrigue seems to surround the couple, but the author feels no compulsion to explain the many mysteries; he allows us to see these characters as they see others, through a distorted lens.

Romania is as bleak as Lorenzo had imagined it would be. Still convulsed by the fallout of the Ceaușescu regime, the country has a kind of Wild West atmosphere that Lorenzo finds distressing. The strangers he is introduced to by Anselmi mutter expressions of sympathy for his mother’s death, but Lorenzo senses he is being sized up; he is not sure for what. Anselmi’s excessive friendliness rattles him.

Memories flood his brain — memories of his mother. “You started leaving when I was young,” he thinks. “The first trip was for pleasure, to go meet some friends who were off trying to strike it rich. You drew the world on a sheet of paper the night before, to show me where you were going.” He recalls that this is when his insomnia began, as he lay restlessly waiting for her to phone. Gradually, he resigned himself to her absence. Lost in his memories, he thinks very little about his adult life. We don’t know if he has ever had a lover or if he is simply unable to love. Somehow his past hurt is always present. We sense that Bajani too, like his narrator, believes our lives are primarily defined by the traumas we endure; only some of us are able to pick up the pieces and move on. Forgiveness or redemption are just buzzwords for those who try foolishly to deny these awful truths.

We learn little about the mother’s early life. She was from a wealthy family and had two older brothers, whom she revered. From the outset, she was seen as the wicked child due to her maverick ways. At her parents’ parties, she was called upon to perform for the guests, singing or reciting a poem or playing the piano. But when she got pregnant with Lorenzo out of wedlock, they threw her into the street and never looked back.

Before the funeral, Lorenzo spends time with an old friend of his mother’s who left for Romania when she did. The man tells Lorenzo that his mother spent her last years drinking excessively, smoking too much, and generally abusing her health. Lorenzo realizes that she “died alone, like a sick dog that couldn’t even lick herself clean, the other dogs no longer willing to come around.” Of the church where her service will be held, he thinks coldly, “what an ugly end they arranged for you, in that church with its scaffolding, the sour smell of paint and broken plaster.” During the service, he seems to coerce himself to disappear — to be counted as present, even though he is absent. As she always was. He thinks back to a final phone call they had at Christmas, when he stood alone in a crowded room of revelers trying to hear her voice. The connection was poor, and she hung up before he could give a response. He had held the phone in his hand, dejected. She had won again.

In interviews, Bajani comes across as an extremely affable man in his early 40s, but he seems guarded when asked to speak about his work. One senses that he feels to do so would only serve to distract from it. His calm, elegant prose stands on its own, defying commentary. Bajani understands how the wounded often remain wounded, cut off from others and themselves. Such is the tragedy of the human story, which is somehow made less tragic by his remarkable ability to illuminate it for us.

¤

Elaine Margolin is a book critic whose work has appeared in many venues, including The Washington PostThe Jerusalem PostThe Denver Post, and San Francisco Chronicle, as well as many literary journals. She lives in Hewlett, New York.

The post Unnurtured and Unloved: On Andrea Bajani’s “If You Kept a Record of Sins” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

Москва

Уличное освещение Москвы перешло на летнее время

The 10 Intense New Action Movies on Netflix That Left Me on the Edge of My Seat!

Top 10 Love Affair Movies of the 2000s and 2010s

Top 5 Websites to Watch FREE Movies - TV Shows (No Sign up!)

I was diagnosed with cancer aged 39… you are never too rich, too famous or too young, says Dr Philippa Kaye

Ria.city






Read also

TikTok videos of women being punched in NYC lead to 2 arrests: NYPD

Verdict on Nicolaou’s death expected on May 10

Delta reiterates commitment to improving security

News, articles, comments, with a minute-by-minute update, now on Today24.pro

News Every Day

I was diagnosed with cancer aged 39… you are never too rich, too famous or too young, says Dr Philippa Kaye

Today24.pro — latest news 24/7. You can add your news instantly now — here


News Every Day

Top 10 Love Affair Movies of the 2000s and 2010s



Sports today


Новости тенниса
ATP

Хачанов: хочу вернуться в топ-10 ATP



Спорт в России и мире
Москва

Трехкратный обладатель Кубка Гагарина уволил тренера и назначил нового



All sports news today





Sports in Russia today

Москва

Ставропольский гандбольный клуб «Виктора» в Москве уступили армейцам


Новости России

Game News

Пробный запуск вампирского градостроя Vampire Legacy: City Builder


Russian.city


Россия

Самые популярные туристические маршруты России: на автомобиле


Губернаторы России
БГАТОиБ

ДИРЕКТОР БРХК ВЛАДИМИР КОЖЕВНИКОВ ПРОВЁЛ "КЛАССНУЮ ВСТРЕЧУ" ДВИЖЕНИЯ ПЕРВЫХ


Откуда взялись «шутники» и «оправдатели» трагедии в «Крокусе»?

Четверых фигурантов дела о теракте в «Крокус Сити Холле» внесли в список террористов и экстремистов

Шапки женские на Wildberries — скидки от 398 руб. (на новые оттенки)

Metaratings: "Спартак" может уволить Абаскаля по ходу сезона, клуб ищет тренера


Певица Диана Арбенина опубликовала редкое фото матери

Invest AG настраивает на своем // Земли в Новой Москве останутся структурам компании на жилых условиях

Ритуальный агент Борис Свистунов: комплексная поддержка в организации похоронных услуг в Санкт-Петербурге и Ленинградской области

Рэпер Тимати: целостность России расколоть не удастся никогда и никому


«Бомж» Дарья передает всем привет»: Касаткина ответила на слова Винер

Рыбакина, наряду со Свёнтек, имеет 70% побед на WTA-1000 против соперниц из топ-10

Теннисист Медведев вышел в полуфинал турнира в Майами, обыграв Харри

Хачанов: хочу вернуться в топ-10 ATP



Рынок вторичной недвижимости Крыма: цены растут, а спрос?

Выпуск ЦФА на платформе «Атомайз» поможет снизить нагрузку на экологию

Эксперты КА «Главный Советник» приняли участие в форуме «Тренды и антитренды корпоративного видео сегодня»

Заказать недорогой ремонт кухонной мебели в районе в Москве и Московской области


ДИРЕКТОР БРХК ВЛАДИМИР КОЖЕВНИКОВ ПРОВЁЛ "КЛАССНУЮ ВСТРЕЧУ" ДВИЖЕНИЯ ПЕРВЫХ

Продвижение Песен и Музыки в Плей-листах Яндекс.Музыка.

На ЧЭРЗ приступили к реорганизации производственной площадки

УГМК уступил курскому «Динамо» в Екатеринбурге. ФОТО


Появилось видео с массовой дракой в Москве

Заседание ОП о регулировании работы строительного комплекса пройдет 3 апреля

Один из фигурантов дела о теракте в «Крокусе» обжаловал арест

Росгвардейцы оказали помощь пострадавшему в дтп велокурьеру в Москве



Путин в России и мире






Персональные новости Russian.city
Ольга Бузова

Ольга Бузова стала человеком-невидимкой на ТВ-3 в новом сезоне легендарного шоу о звёздах



News Every Day

Top 10 Love Affair Movies of the 2000s and 2010s




Friends of Today24

Музыкальные новости

Персональные новости