5. Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
Translation: from Italian by Ann Goldstein (2019)
OPD: 1957
format: 370-page paperback
acquired: April 2023 read: Jan 14-28 time reading: 14:12, 2.3 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: novel theme: TBR
locations: Procida, an island in the Bay of Naples. I think ~1912.
about the author: Italian novelist, poet, translator, and children's books author was born in and lived most of her lived in Rome, 1912-1985.

I'm a little disappointed in myself as a reader. This is a beautiful book, but I never settled down into it. I was constantly impatient.

Arturo grows up on Procida, an island in the Bay of Naples, alone. His teenage mother died in childbirth, and his German-born father only visits briefly, leaving him alone for months at time. As a baby and younger child he was cared for by a young man, Silvestro. But Silvestro has left to join the army, and Arturo, now 14, lives only with his dog in an old large house, fed by a man he never really sees. Uneducated, except by Silvestro and the old books in the house, which he devours, and the example of his absent father, his real education comes as he roams the island and its beaches freely, accompanied by his dog, sometimes taking his rowboat. His own Virgilian Eden.

The untethered Arturo, bound only by his island, has a rough transition into puberty as his father marries a 16-yr-old uneducated Neapolitan girl, and leaves her in the house with Arturo. Even as Arturo hates the ugly common girl his father refuses to love, he comes to admire her willful insistence of her own view of the world, and her religious devotion to many different Mary's. He finds love in a swirl of conflicting emotions around sex, disappointment in his impossible ideals, and his longing to be loved as a mother loves.

Maybe this could called forlorn in paradise. It takes a while before Arturo casts himself out of his Eden, and into WWII. (note: I had to look up which war this was. I closed the book thinking it was WWI.)

This book has a feel similar to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet. The translator is the same (this is a 2019 translation). And Ferrante is quoted on the front and back cover. Both books work partially on atmospheric and interpersonal unspoken emotional swings.

His paradise:
Some evenings, after dinner, drawn by the cool outside air, I stretched out on the doorstep, or on the ground in the yard. The night, which, down below an hour before had seemed to be so fierce, here, a step from the lighted French door, became familiar again. Now if I looked at the sky, it was a great ocean, scattered with countless islands, and, sharpening my gaze, I saw among the stars, those whose names I knew: Arturo, first of all of others, and then the Bears, Mars, the Pleiades, Castor and Pollux, Cassiopeia… I had always regretted that in modern times there was no longer on earth some forbidden limit, like the Pillars of Hercules for the ancients, because I would’ve liked to be the first to go beyond it, challenging the ban with my audacity; in the same way, now, looking at the starry sky, I envied the future pioneers who would be able to reach the stars.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/356616#8390688 ( )

Splendido. Scrittrice con la S maiuscola. Travolgente nella sua semplicità. Consigliato a tutti gli amanti delle buone letture. ( )

A beautiful book, wholeheartedly recommended. It's very well written, full of poetry and adventure. ( )

Unusual coming of age story about a boy who lives a nearly solitary (but idyllic) existence on an island off the coast of Italy. His mother died in childbirth and his father travels much and is away for extended periods of time. His world gets turned upside down when his father comes home with a bride only a couple of years older than him. ( )

On the island of Procida off the coast of Naples, 14 year old Arturo leads an Edenic existence. His mother died when he is born, and his father disappears onto the mainland for weeks, sometimes months at a time, leaving Arturo free to explore the wonders of his island, coming and going as he pleases. Until the day his father steps off the ferry with a new wife and step-mother for Arturo, that is. Nunziata is just a couple of years older than Arturo, and with her arrival his world is up-ended.

This is basically an unusual and enchanting coming of age novel, as Arturo must learn to navigate his way to maturity. ( )