Volume 32, Number 4 · March 14, 1985
Give Him a Break!
By Gabriele Annan
Aracoeli
by Elsa Morante, translated by William Weaver
Random House, 311 pp., $17.95
Morante's last novel, History, appeared eight years ago. Its child-hero, Giuseppe, was orphaned and deprived, so is the hero of her new book, Manuele. Giuseppe was the child of a poor middle-aged widow raped by a German soldier. He spends his early years in a shelter for displaced persons. Manuele is born ten years earlier, in 1932. His father is an officer in the Italian navy, but the apparent privilege of being born into the upper bourgeoisie is an extra curse laid upon him. He is the mirror image of Giuseppe, but the mirror glass is black. Giuseppe was born happy, though cursed with hereditary epilepsy, which killed him before he was seven. Manuele is simply born cursed:
Review, 2619 words
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