853.914 BAS

Questa raccolta di racconti ("Lidia Mantovani", "La passeggiata prima di cena", "Una lapide in via Mazzini", "Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti" e "Una notte del '43") valse a Giorgio Bassani il premio Strega 1956. In comune le cinque storie hanno una sorta di dolente consapevolezza e l'ambientazione: Ferrara, avvolta dal pesante panneggio scuro del fascismo. Bassani ci porta nell'animo di questa "gente, per il resto, quasi sempre per bene": la ragazza madre Lidia Mantovani; il dottor Elia Corcos in perenne scontro con la moglie; il sopravvissuto al lager Geo Josz; la vecchia socialista Clelia Trotti, lasciata morire in carcere. Storie diverse eppure vicine, accomunate dalla difficoltà con la quale i protagonisti si adattano a una provincia italiana che da un lato consola, dall'altro respinge qualunque cosa non le sia propria. Persone comprese.

Heerlijke sfeertekening uit Ferrara. De verhalen boeien zonder speciaal te zijn.Dit is de grote verdienste van Giorgio Bassani. ( )

7

'Within the Walls' is an interesting collection of five tales all set within the confines of the Italian city of Ferrara. They cover such themes as love and betrayal, and the justification for the lives we lead; each sits in the foreground with the Italian city and its difficult history always ready to lean over your shoulder and reframe the plot.

Bassani was a magnificent writer, of that there can be no doubt, and although I did find my attention wandering at times, these stories are still definitely worth the effort of paying close attention to. You learn so much about the craft of writing here. Not sure how to manage the exclamation mark in your prose? Read Bassani! It feels like he's telling you the story directly, and when somebody in his audience interjects he must respond with a parenthetical aside capped with a wondrous exclamation mark. Speaking of parentheses, Bassani was also a master of the run-on, multi-clause sentence, with so many branches that it would be nightmare for anybody to draw a sentence diagram of much that you'll find here. One wonders, in fact, if David Foster Wallace read much Bassani before he fell so in love with the footnote... ( )