Book notes No. 23 : Reeds in the Wind, Grazia Deledda

Ten degrees at 8am. Blue skies with a touch of haze and a touchy little breeze.

So, on this the last day of March, I've finally put words on the screen about the first of this year's Nobel Prize-winning novelists, which I had hoped to deliver on the last day of January (that's motherhood for you). See here.

Grazia Deledda's novel, Reeds in the Wind, has, quite simply, taken my breath away and effectively given me writer's block (I aspire, but would surely fail). I remember now why the Nobel is the Nobel and why no other literary award except perhaps the Pulitzer and the Booker could ever come close.

Deledda was born in 1871, in Nuoro, Sardinia. She had little formal education, but read and read and read, insatiably you might say. She left her small hometown in 1899, stopping first in Cagliari before settling in Rome. She wrote an astonishing 33 novels and many collections of short stories, and at the age of 55 became the second woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The story? It's the story of the Pintor sisters, their nephew, Giacinto, and their ageing serf, Efix. Most of all it's about Efix, who continues to serve the family even though they have descended from their nobility and affluence to a kind of noble poverty. For Efix has committed a secret crime and has spent most of his life trying to make up for it, and now the time has come for the ultimate penance.

Reeds in the Wind is an astonishing novel. Deledda has here produced a deft and sustained picture of life in Sardinia, evoking its landscapes, its people and its traditions. Her characters, even those sketched in among the crowds, are all people on the brink of a new, modern world. They seem to be struggling with the old ways, the old forms, the old beliefs - the baronial system, for example, and a Christianity mingled benignly with belief in nighttime goblins and witches - as those ways, forms and beliefs seem to be sliding out of their reach, to be replaced by...what?

This is a poignant moment in history, and, for the characters of the novel, one full of emotion. And Deledda doesn't shie away from eliciting those emotions from the reader. In particular, she makes use of what James Joyce would have called the 'Epiphany' to halt the progress of the narrative and encapsulate a moment of pure understanding, emotion or transformation-transfiguration. (And there was me thinking the Epiphany was unique to Joyce.) Two characters in the book fall in love, and I have never before read two such moving renditions of this exact moment as I found in this book.

Reeds in the Wind is a complex novel, but not as demanding as one might expect. And its rewards are many. As Todd Gitlin wrote in the Chicago Tribune:

"The world is suddenly fuller, the reader's own capacity for astonishment miraculously replenished....A writer of the emotional power of Grazia Deledda is overdue for literary resurrection...."

I'd heartily second that emotion, and would recommend Reeds in the Wind to anyone looking for the reading experience of the year, 2009, a full 80 years after this book was first published.

Bulletin : Mama's zero-proof Lent

Nine degrees at nine am. Mercifully not raining for the Monday morning descent, but threatening. The famous four are fine, doing very good impersonations of those round, fluffy chicks you see on Easter cards and in childrens' books.

Steady as she goes on Lent tea-total...although there was a wobble the other night when my husband, the angel in our kitchen, confronted me with a 10-year-old bottle of Michel Lafarge Volnay, to accompany a celebratory supper of roasted venison with pumpkin and dried plums, garnished with roasted garlic.

Until that moment, I hadn't quite realised exactly how much of a sadist M. actually is...

Wind over Water

The weather in the streets of Carmine is damp and gloomy. The time has sprung forward an hour and we're all slightly discombobulated.

Took delivery yesterday of our newest piece of art, Tammy Vitale's 'Wind over Water'. Very excited, especially as we had started to believe it had been lost in the post.

Tammy is a largely self-taught American artist based in Maryland. She works in a number of media, making paintings, sculptures, ceramics and jewellery pieces. This is an artist who doesn't have to blow her own trumpet. She is represented in various galleries and boutiques along the East Coast, and has exhibited in dozens of shows both solo and group. Her work has found its way into the grateful hands of clients in the US, Britain, France and Italy.

What for me is extraordinary about Tammy's work is the sheer energy it exudes. Tammy's skill for capturing the vibrancy of life is remarkable. As is her ability to produce new images, new forms, new ideas, new instances of thought-provoking beauty at every turn.

Tammy's online gallery is here. It's well worth browsing through all the categories - there is no end to this artist's versatility, energy and thoughtfulness.

“I believe that, since each person in the world is unique, they should be able to buy art that is unique, too - art that helps them create comfortable and special places where ever they find themselves.” --Tammy Vitale

Tammy, you've certainly made that possible for us. Thank-you

Four plus four

Misty and rainy. A proper drink, finally, for the new roses, currants, rhododendron, lettuces and box.

There are four chicks starting to fluff up nicely under the warming lamp in the chick nursery. I doubt the remaining four eggs will hatch, but the incubator thermostat light is still blinking away in quiet optimism.

Banned entirely from the house, the cats are sulking.

Chick news

Blue skies at 7am, and, somewhat ahead of time, our first chick has hatched, whole and healthy and is tottering around cheeping encouragement at the remaining seven eggs.

So it looks like I'll be spending today with a cup of tea looming over the incubator cheeping encouragement too.

I don't recall signing up to be a farmer's wife...

Ten degrees at nine am. Bright sunshine with some clouds. Breezy. It hasn't rained for 20 days, and the soil is dust beneath my spade.

Nature making art No. 2

Shadows on the wall of Cannobio's newest public building, the Casa della Gioventu'.

In Switzerland

The rennaisance Madonna del Ponte, Brissago, Ticino

Joe woz ere

Plaque recording a speech made to the people of Cannobio in 1859 by one Giuseppe Garibaldi, Cannobio lungolago.

A place to stay

Hotel Cannobio, Cannobio

Camellia season

Two perfect camellias, in Emma's garden, Carmine Superiore.

Yellow

Yesterday, as I sped about VCO province, up and down the lake like a mad thing (thank God for the world's-most-battered Panda), I started to notice a theme.

A yellow theme.

The daffodils gathered in crowds (nay, hosts) everywhere I look are gaily nodding at the ripe lemons in the boughs of the lemon trees that do so well in sunny, sheltered spots. The mimosa trees are giant sculptures made up of thousands of tiny pom-poms towering from the lower slopes of the lakeside. The bright yellow primulas are still flourishing in the stony nooks and crannies. And the forsythia, large and small, are displaying their fragile flowers.

There are yellow butterflies and yellow-breasted birds. Yellow roadworks signs have sprouted up all along the lakeside SS34 (even where there are no visible roadworks), and gangs of chaps are out in yellow overalls painting the alberghi yellow in time for the Easter influx of visitors.

Even B., home from her travels, has ferretted out a yellow sunhat and wears it even in bed, and Mama is tempted to pull on her token yellow T-shirt.


Perhaps some marketing genius should institute a Yellow Festival - a Sunday in March when we all wear yellow, eat yellow, paint our faces yellow and race yellow boats. There could be yellow balloons and yellow bumper stickers, yellow paintballing, yellow cakes, yellow caramelle and yellow cocktails.

Sound like fun?


PS The eggs in the incubator have been candled and eight have quickened. Unless the cats or the kids get them, we may have cute little yellow chicks in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed.

Home and hearth

Another bright and sunny day. Nine degrees at 8am. Twenty-one by 11am (and still the Cannobiese are wearing their coats and smile indulgently at their pet inglese in short sleeves). The house is full of daffodils, and the first of the magnolias are in flower.

Sketch, Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore

This fresco sketch reminds me always of the main fireplace in our house. We inherited massive chains on which to hang our pots that haven't changed in design since the time of this Carmenite. When I look at the gown, though, the following words from the tags on my children's clothes always come to mind : Keep This Garment Away from Fire. I hope she did!

Terza di Quaresima : the third Sunday in Lent

As a teenager I was in love with John Keats. I was as much in love with him as he was with Fanny. As much in love with him as he was with Love itself. I blushed at his sexual imagery, I bathed in his sensual descriptions, I lay despondent with him in "embalmèd darkness", listening to the song of the nightingale. I memorized entire swathes of his sublime poetry just for fun (okay, for exams). I knew it would come in useful one day.

Like this, for instance :

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth....

[John Keats Ode to a Nightingale]

Oh yes, I misspent my youth in this glorious young man's company.

And what do I get these days? Especially these days in Lent when I've sworn off alcohol just to prove a point?

No beaded bubbles winking at me. No sunburnt mirth. No taste of Flora. And definitely no purple-stainèd mouth.

No.

I get the instruction booklet for the juicer and a couple of droopy carrots.

Garden notes

Dry, warm and sunny.

In the garden this week my plan was to make use of what I laughingly call my 'holiday' (ha-ha-ha) to get ahead before the waxing moon in April, when all hell breaks loose and we have to source, haul up the hill and plant everything all at once.

The week started well. I planted the first of what I hope will be a lovely box hedge. Mind you, the only plants I could afford in numbers were the very tiny ones, the ones you need a magnifying glass to see, so I guess it'll be a while before they actually screen the fat butts of the green plastic composters. A very long while.

Also, I over-optimistically bought a rhododendron. The neighbouring camellias are doing well, so I'm hopeful, but having read the prophetic words, "never let the soil dry out", I fear for its roots in high summer.

I also fear for the roots of a five-foot oleander which I gaily moved a couple of weeks ago. I fear that the roots were a little too much damaged when I wrenched it impatiently out of the ground, and now it's starting to sag ominously. Fingers crossed. The opera ain't over till the fat lady sings, as they say. Any recipes for recovery?

What I laughingly called my holiday above was brought about by a clever pincer movement. Child no. 1 was as usual incarcerated in kindergarten while child no. 2 was deftly exiled to another country altogether. But a clear run at the garden was not to be. I spent two of my five precious days dashing about the countryside getting medical advice from everyone who has ever been the mother of a child with scarlattina (and some who haven't), and then exposing my first-born to the gentle ministrations of a hospital lab assistant gathering Strep. bacteria (or not, as the case turns out to be). He was so good (the first-born, not the lab assistant), that I promised to grant his heart's greatest wish, and was surprised to find that his heart's greatest wish was to go to the nursery to buy a tree (go figure!).

My gardening day was not ruined after all. We belted across country to the nursery where I stumbled across (literally) a whole load of Rosa rugosa - an old-fashioned bush rose with smallish flowers and, I was told by the knowledgeable Swiss-German Mrs Saletti who promptly sold them to me, a very powerful pong. Someone had omitted to add any information at all about the colour to the tag, however, so I'm looking forward to a surprise later in the year. Believe me, it'll be a surprise if the damn things flower at all on the rubble tip that I eyebrow-wagglingly call my new raised bed.

Now I know what you're thinking. I know that roses aren't trees, not even bush roses. What can I say, except "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone..." Besides No. 1 child is now the proud owner of his first Gormiti dreadful-miniature-plastic-thingy, so Mama's conscience is clear.

And finally, today's labour of love is the first of this year's eatables. A mixture of four different types of lettuce and some parsley, to join the broccoli, cauliflowers and leeks that are still going strong from last autumn.

Yesterday in Cannobio, one of the many smiling cittadini called out to me that "the beautiful season has begun"!

I think it has.

Pic: from www.luirig.altervista.org, reproduced with permission.

Window-opening day

Thirteen degrees at 10am. Azure skies and bright sunshine. This morning I was treated to a lecture from my trilingual 4-year-old on the difference between azzurro and blu, with special reference to the sky and his sweater. Smartass kid!

Today seems to be by general consensus window-opening day. It's an important moment, I would say, in the gradual welcoming of spring. Windows and doors are open all over Carmine, Cannobio and points in between, folk are gossiping out of them, and the fresh air is flooding in.

Ironmongery

Warm, sunny and windy. A host of orange-and-brown butterflies were trembling on the granite stones of the pathway up, drying their wings in the sun. A beautiful sight! A technical error means I can't offer a picture. Here's something more prosaic instead.

Wrought iron bolt, Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore

No rest for the wicked

Warm bright and breezy.

A good day for taking a few cushions out to the garden bench, lazing in the spring sunshine and finishing the latest book. But no, Mama is chasing round the countryside in the world's-most-battered on account of a little bug-ger called Streptococcus pyogenes...

San Vittore, Cannobio

Weather as yesterday, starting warm, bright and breezy and turning overcast and cold in the afternoon. The forsythia will be in bloom tomorrow.

San Vittore, Cannobio

Although a church is recorded on this site as far back as 1076, the existing building dates from the 18th century. It is home to the SS Pietà, an image of the Virgin Mary that is said to have bled prior to a plague that devastated the surrounding countryside but left Cannobio largely unscathed. The picturesque candlelight festival of the SS Pietà takes place in Cannobio every January 7 and 8.

For more Cannobio and environs images, click here.

Carmine quotes No. 14 : which came first...?

A whopping 10 degrees at 8:30am, and 17 as I breezed back past the digital thermometer in Cannobio at 12:30pm. Blue skies with fluffies scudding across the sky chased by a stiff breeze. The mimosas are blooming, the bees are buzzing in the elephant's ears, the cats are quarreling and the children are unmanageable. Spring has sprung.

This year's batch of eggs went into the artificial hen on Saturday night (we can always find something dissolute to do on Saturday nights in Carmine). We've been slowly bringing the incubator up to temperature (a strict thirty-seven-point-five-degrees) over the last few days using carefully sized potatoes in place of the eggs.

When the eggs went in, the potatoes, warm from the incubator, came out and were left on the table, where AJ found them. He soon found Mama with his new discovery :

AJ : Mama, Mama, chicks!

Mama : No, darling, not for 21 days yet.

AJ : Yes, Mama, chicks. I can feel them!

Mama : You can feel them? What do you mean?

AJ: Mama, the potatoes have got chicks in them, I can feel them, they're warm ...


Puts a whole new complexion on the "which came first" question ... the chicken or the ... potato?




For more on how to hatch your own chicks, click on the tag Chick-rearing 2008

Reported conversations No. 13 : abstinence and family life

A bright, clear dawn, with rosy fingers over the snow-capped mountains. Another gardening day! Lent without alcohol is going, well, okay...

M : Aperitivo time! Shall I get you sparkling apple juice?

L (mumbled under breath) : Zarking fardwarks!

M : I'm opening a bottle of Michel Lafarge Volnay to complement supper tonight - grape juice for you?

L (louder) : Zarking fardwarks!

M : And maybe a Sauterne to go with the apple crumble? I guess you'll pass, eh?

L (losing it, shouts) : Didn't you hear me? Zarking bloody fardwarks!

M (thinks) : My mother always warned me against marrying a Douglas Adams fan ...

For more on giving up swearing for Lent, connect here.

Motherhood means No.11 : Dexterity

Motherhood means ...

... being able to do almost anything that mere mortals can do, but with only one hand. Having carried a baby around on my left arm for the best part of four years now, I've become truly single-handed. While my left arm has muscle tone worthy of a Saddler's Wells performance-art drummer, my right hand has achieved dexterity equalled only by the master watchmakers of Geneva.

With a mere four fingers and one single stubby thumb I can : open a screw-top bottle; squeeze toothpaste onto a toothbrush; write a blog post; fix my specs; dress myself (think about it); change a nappy (non-squirmy baby); iron a city shirt; put in my contact lenses; grate cheese; slice bread; build IKEA furniture (okay, maybe the baby needs to help with the instructions); defend myself from marauding cockerels; change a light bulb (don't try that at home); de-tic a cat; stack and light a woodburning stove; clean up a pile of whatever (let your imagination wander); and, best of all, open and pour a bottle of fizz without losing a drop.

Remembering this is a family show, what can you do with only one hand?

The devil is in the detail

Six degrees at 8am. Overcast and unfriendly. Squidgy underfoot. But, I sense a turning in the weather and perhaps the weekend will be spent in the garden after all.

Fresco detail, Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore

Our tiny church is covered in 15th-century frescoes of the Lombardy School, which were in the process of being restored when I first came to Carmine. I could spend hours in the coolness and solitude of this prettiest of churches, discovering the tiny details that are everywhere.

It took me a long time, for instance, before I noticed with a jolt, the black-painted devil-figure in the distant background of this crowd scene. In my imagination he's jumping up and down, vainly trying to make the overdressed fools in the foreground see that while they are preoccupied elsewhere their opulent city is burning : "Over here! The city is burning! Why can't you hear me?! We're on fire!".

While this is actually part of a cycle depicting the life of St Bartholomew (the saint often shown carrying his own skin over his arm), for me its message is to not get too dazzled or distracted with events that take place right outside your front door. Other more important (exciting, life-affirming) things are often happening elsewhere.

Perhaps it could also offer a new twist on the old proverb : "the devil is in the detail"...?

Ten rules for life (in Carmine)

A disappointing three degrees at 8:30am after a night of pitter-patter raindrops. I notice that this time last year the apricot was in bloom. This year the buds are huddled under the bedcovers like a 4-year-old after a late night at the piscina.

Congratulations to Franco, by the way - the first narcissi of the year are blooming in his orchard. They're looking a bit wet.

P.S. Lent day 5, nothing embarrassing to report.

Back in the middle of February, Jeanne, over at The Raisin Chronicles, set out her ten rules for life. They made me laugh, I guess because I recognised so many of them to be true from my own experience.

On the Monkey-see Monkey-do principle, I thought it would be interesting to think about the rules of life ... in Carmine.

Here they are...

1. Never buy what you can't carry up the hill, you, yourself, alone, before it a.) rots in the car (in the case of exotic fruit), or b.) becomes obsolete (in the case of satellite dishes, computer equipment, and home entertainment centres).

2. Never invite houseguests between the months of October and April - the toilet seats are too chilly, and the guest room too draughty.

3. Don't ever make friends with Carmine cats. They eat too much, take liberties with the bedding and all you get for your pains is a little pile of something aromatic on the pantry floor.

4. Always say 'yes' to offers of second-hand furniture from your Carmine neighbours. This way, you get new furniture without having to carry it up the hill, and the woodworm colony in your house gets an infusion of new genes.

5. If you're planning a delivery of building materials, always warn your neighbours in advance to shut their windows - helicopter rotors kick up a storm of dust for which you'll never be forgiven.

6. Don't expect house calls from doctors, the police, or DHL. There's nowhere to land the air ambulance, heavy artillery is too awkward to tote up all those steps, and besides, according to DHL, Carmine Superiore doesn't even exist.

7. Don't gossip about your neighbours in the summertime when all the windows are open. Carmine walls have ears.

8. Everybody is the centre of his own universe, and everyone who has a house in Carmine has a story to tell - of romance, of passion, of how they came here, why they stayed, the renovations they screwed up with their own bare hands... Always be ready to listen if you want them to listen to you.

9. Take out the best health insurance you can afford. At some point you're going to need new knees, new hips and a couple of shiny new titanium intervertebral disks. Alternatively, sneak into the church as often as possible and pray to S. Gottardo, whose patronage covers at least problems with legs and might stretch to backs if you drop a large denomination note into the offerte box.

10. Do make sure to schedule a lunchtime aperitivo in the sun by the church at least once a week. That view of the lake is part of the reason you came here, the bubbles will take your mind off your aching back, and no-one will overhear the latest neighbourhood gossip except S. Gottardo and You-Know-Who.

500 posts, 30,000 hits

Seven degrees at 8:30am. Heavy rain and lots of mud. A child's heaven, a mother's hell!

A singular occurrence.

The hit counter topped 30,000 at more or less the same time as the post-counter hit the round 500. Thank-you once again to all the well-wishing readers and correspondents who make my life in cyberspace such fun.

And not only in cyberspace, but also in the real world. Like Frankenstein's monster A View from Carmine Superiore seems to have taken on a life of its own and staggered out of the cyberspace laboratory into the light of day. Thank-you again to the person who orchestrated without my knowledge two articles about the blog in the local press. Thank-you to the nameless mountain biker who passed by the other day, heaping praise on my head. And thank-you to the many friends and acquaintances in Carmine, Cannero, Cannobio and beyond who read from time to time.

Chick-rearing 2009 : preparation

Lent without alcohol day 3 : no problem. (Click here for more.)

Still damp and warm-ish. Starting to think about moving back into the unheated rooms in the house. It'll be nice to spread out again.

With this feeling comes the start of the chicken-breeding programme for this year. Those surplus eggs will be in the incubator shortly!

Now, where is the incubator?

Carmine-on-the-Hill

Lent on the wagon, day 2 : okay so far (for an explanation, click here).

Eight degrees at 8:30am. Damp and misty. A day totally unlike the one pictured below, but not totally unlike the one pictured here.

Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore

"We're going up there?"

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008, 2009. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

What are you giving up for Lent?

Cold, grey and fairly foggy. Damp on the ground. Rain later.

Some years ago I spent the best part of a year in northern Nigeria, in Hausaland. Land of mud palaces, bitter poverty, fleeting moments of political power and the ever-ready muezzin with his call to prayer.

My stay spanned Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and prayer, roughly equivalent to the Christian Lent. Ramadan was an experience. The year I was there it coincided with the hottest part of the year just before the rainy season began, and with certain political moves by the IMF that had ordinary Nigerians queueing for days (I kid not) for petrol.

It was brutal.

For everyone.

We woke before daybreak to eat a meal that had been prepared the night before and drink as much water as we could before our bodies screamed enough. Then, feeling like tanked-up camels, we would go back to bed for another few hours as the first call to prayer of the day sounded and the shutters went down on food, drink, smoking and all other bodily pleasures.

As the Koran commands, we were all sitting in our places in the evening when the muezzin called his last round of the day and as soon as prayer was finished, we broke our fast first with dates and then with a slow, full meal of unbearably hot meat stew and pounded yam. I came quickly to adore dates.

As non-Muslims, we were not required to fast, but any bending of the fasting laws we were asked to keep to ourselves. I opted to drink water during the day and would creep to the kitchen for a sly glass every so often - most often at prayer times, when everyone else was otherwise occupied. I didn't eat, but I smoked throughout.

My then-husband, though, had a worse time. I don't think he'd mind my saying that he was fairly addicted to alcohol. He found Muslim Nigeria hard enough, having to slope around in dark corners in search of a discrete beer, but at Ramadan, even the ultra-dangerous backstreet bars were closed and he went almost insane. His art, for artist he was and is, went into a manic multicolour phase to prove it.

Why am I telling you all this? Partly because it's good to reminisce. Nigeria was tough, but a very important life-experience. Partly because today is the start of Lent (if you live in Ambrosian Carmine), and I've decided I can't live without chocolate - my usual Lenten fast - and I'm going to quit alcohol instead.

I've chosen alcohol because it should be possible for me to go the whole 40 days. Easier than chocolate anyway. And a million times easier than tea, to which I am totally and unashamedly addicted.

I'm not a big drinker. In fact, anything beyond a couple of glasses of Burgundy or Barbera in any 24-hour period makes me so physically sick I've come to believe I may be allergic to alcohol. I quit drinking spirits the day I found I was pregnant with AJ and I never went back, not even when tempted with a peaty Island Malt proferred by one of London's most celebrated whisky connosseurs. I was married for seven years to someone who preferred the bottle to his wife. Happily, he went on the wagon the day I left him and has never gone back. But the experience has left me with an extreme abhorrence of drunkenness - even the 'happy drunk' variety - which means I haven't stepped into a pub in what seems like decades.

But I do enjoy a quality wine that ages nicely and doesn't give me a headache, and I'm prepared to drive all the way to Burgundy and back a couple of times a year in search of a predictably good drinking experience. Or Sizzano, or Asti. And, more to the point if you live in Carmine, I'm prepared to heft a couple of cases onto my back for the long walk up. So perhaps I will miss my mealtime tipple and my weekend aperitif after all.

If my Lent resolution is anything like my New Year's Resolution - yes, it's now March 1st and I still haven't finished January's Nobel book, let alone February's - I won't get much further than Tuesday. But we'll see how we go. And I'm going to bore you every day with a bulletin to let you know how I'm doing - perhaps shame at failing will keep me on track.

So what have you given up for Lent?

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008, 2009. All rights reserved. Please ask first.