Lia LeviReseñas

Autumn 1943. A Jewish child and a city occupied by German soldiers. The father is not there. His mother works at home and Daniel has to rush to queue to buy food. But it is the grim concierge Apollonia, certainly a witch, who scares him more than anything. Until one day... Maybe even a witch can save a child?

L'Albergo della Magnolia è un romanzo subdolo: inizia con un tono lieve, leggero, quasi frivolo. Ti fa quasi dubitare del suo valore letterario e ti fa pensare che sia solo la solita storia d'amore travolta dagli eventi storici.

In realtà, l'autrice tesse intorno ai suoi lettori una rete di inconsapevolezza simile a quella che avvolge Dino, il protagonista, ebreo, che vuole sposare una ragazza di buona famiglia, cattolica e benestante. Siamo nel periodo fascista e gli ostacoli a un'unione del genere sembrano insormontabili: tuttavia, con tenacia, il protagonista riesce a superarli e a sposare la sua bellissima Sonia Gentile.

Sembra non rendersi conto, però, che la sua non è affatto una vittoria: non è affatto riuscito a entrare nella famiglia di Sonia. Di fatto viene a malapena tollerato, come un cane rognoso che venga sopportato solo perché la bambina lo trova incomprensibilmente carino.

Ma l'aspetto peggiore è che Dino è disposto a perdere la propria dignità per diventare uno di famiglia, per essere amato e stimato come meriterebbero la sua cultura e la sua intelligenza, indiscutibilmente superiori a quelle dei membri della famiglia Gentile, appiattiti in una comoda visione del mondo borghese.

E quando il dramma delle leggi razziali si abbatterà su di lui, innescando una serie di eventi che, con il senno del poi, parevano inevitabili, Dino non potrà far altro che arrendersi alle logiche della famiglia Gentile.

Alessandro used to be considered a genius when he was younger. Then school started and his mother started realizing that he is bright but probably not a genius. This could have been the story of any precocious child with an overbearing mother who thinks her son is the best one and noone is better in anything. Except that this specific family happened to live in Genoa, Italy in the mid 1930s. And the family was Jewish.

The mother had been born and raised in Genoa and her whole family is in the area - providing Alessandro with a grandfather and numerous uncles, aunts and cousins. She believes that she is safe in Genoa and that nothing bad can happen to her at home. The father is a British citizen who had always thought that one day he is going to go back - except that the wife is not really interested in leaving her home so he never did.

And then Italy slowly starts changing the rules - the race laws come into effect and being Jewish becomes a problem. And yet, the family stays - the mother is not ready to admit that she must go and as she makes the decision at home, they all stay. The city is flooded with refugees from Austria and Germany and yet they stay - because it will never happen to them, not in Genoa. When the war really starts, the father ends up being branded as an enemy - that British passport which he always considered his Plan B ends up being less than useless - too late to use it to flee, now it ends up getting him sent to the middle of nowhere in the country (better than a camp I guess). And the rules keep changing.

The novel ends on what seems to be a cliffhanger - but only on the surface. The story which the author set out to tell is told - the story of a family which could not believe that things will go that bad, a family who believed in their own city and country and who ended up losing all in the process. In the next few years a lot more families will lose a lot more but this is a story for another place.

It is a story about how slowly changes happen sometimes and how clinging to the familiar can harm you. Reading the novel you want to shake the mother and tell her to run. And yet, the reality is that noone knew what was coming and even when people thought they knew, they still believed they were safe where they were.

Tucked at the end of the novel is a note by the author that the novel is based on real life events - those of her husband's family, complete with a photocopy of his documentation at the border.

If you are looking for heroics, that is not the novel for you. It is a slow (except for the end of course), almost meditative novel about a family, a place and a time. It sounds almost banal - it could have been any family. But then this is part of the point - it was just another family - which got luckier than most.

The novel won the 2018 Strega Giovani award (the youth/YA version of Premio Strega - the biggest Italian award; this one is awarded by a jury of over a thousand upper secondary school students who get to read the 12 nominated books and vote for the best/their favorite).

Not a perfect novel and most of the characters are nowhere near likeable. And yes, the story is believable, even before you find that author's note. How much of the story is reality and how much invention is unclear but it works as is.½

Buona l'idea, credibili i personaggi e la storia. Ma è la scrittura che proprio non va, troppe virgole punti, la lettura viene interrotta continuamente si procede a strappi, totalmente mancanti le descrizioni dei luoghi, quartieri, le classi della scuola, i mobili delle case i vestiti eccetera. Un sei stiracchiato.

Luglio 1942: alla stazione di Nonantola un gruppo di ragazzi scende spaesato da un treno proveniente dall'Europa orientale. Sono ebrei in fuga dalla guerra e dalla deportazione nazista. In cerca di salvezza, hanno lasciato genitori e amici per affrontare un viaggio pericoloso e pieno di difficoltà. Il loro futuro dipenderà dal coraggio e dall'intraprendenza di un intero paese. (fonte: retro di copertina)

Remarkably gentle personal remembrance of Jewish childhood during WWII in Italy. While there are terrible things happening, Lia and her sisters are protected by her parents and successfully hide at a convent boarding school once things get really bad. It feels like it is written by a very young child for other young children -- seems like it would be a good introduction for kids who aren't ready to take in the enormity and brutality of the Holocaust. It's also a good reminder of the many perspectives of survivors.

Advanced Reader's Copy Provided by Edelweiss.

It took me a little while to get into this one however I'm glad I stuck with it. It was a thought-provoking and compelling novel about a Jewish-Italian teacher who falls in love with a privileged Catholic woman in the 1930s and the consequences of the compromises/sacrifices he makes so that they can marry.

Col fiato sospeso fino alla fine.
Non è mia abitudine leggere casi o premi letterari nel momento in cui si producono ma per puro caso, e nella totale ignoranza degli eventi, sono incappata in questo quasi "a caldo" (per lo meno per i miei tempi). Ho letto in giro brutte critiche, forse per mero amor di polemica. A me il libro è piaciuto e vi ho trovato, ma questo i commentatori più preparati lo segnalano da almeno un decennio, disperanti analogie con la situazione attuale di persone perseguitate, discriminate, umiliate, tradite, ingannate e vendute.
I paladini del "prima gli tttaliani" che oggi additano lo "straniero" quale attentatore della sicurezza nazionale e ladro della felicità della nazione magari sono pure i discendenti degli italianissimi passatori che truffavano e derubavano di beni e vita i disperati che tentavano di espatriare. Quanti leghisti attuali dovranno la fortuna di avere un orticello da proteggere da supposti assalti alle azioni di nonni e bisnonni scafisti? Quanti sovranisti discendono da spie e delatori? Segreti di famiglia ben custoditi e di sicuro non tramandati alle generazioni successive. A volte penso che un giretto all'Archivio di Stato dovremmo farcelo tutti, noi italiani "brava gente".

Durante i suoi incontri con i ragazzi, Lia Levi si è sentita rivolgere tante domande sugli ebrei, l'ebraismo e l'antisemitismo. In questo libro ne ha scelte venti tra le più significative, alle quali risponde con chiarezza e semplicità (fonte: Google Books)

A 25 anni dalla prima pubblicazione di "Una bambina e basta" (edizioni e/o, 1994), Lia Levi ripercorre la sua storia al tempo delle leggi razziali e ne fa dono ai bambini di oggi. Lia ha appena finito la prima elementare, quando la mamma le dice che a settembre non potrà più tornare in classe. (fonte: Google Books)

This one kind of crept on me. It is quietly told but gathers force as the story mvoes to the ultimate conclusion-rahter like watching a wave break on shore.

I hope more books by this author are translated.

The story moves slowly, in fact I was speed reading this novel ( don't usually do it) to get to the "good parts" ( in other words too much posturing and exposition). Story is an important and reveals the impact of Mussolini's racial laws on Jewish community during WW2. Maybe even more important is the "bella figure" syndrome intertwined into Italian culture that allowed a family to more-or-less wipe out the Jewishness in their upper class family.

The Jewish Husband by Lia Levi
Europa Editions
The cover of the book is evocative of a beautiful and graceful Sophia Loren--I loved It!

What a wonderful surprise this book was! I've read many stories about WWII and the holocaust but not one about what life was like during Facist Italy. Dino Carpi, now David Katz and living in Israel, is writing a letter to his son, Michele. A letter to try to explain his abandonment of his family before WWII sweeps throughout Europe. A story of love for Sonia and the humiliations suffered for that love. Being Jewish, loving a gentile and living in Italy during the reign of Mussolini was frightening but Lia Levi tells us a fascinating story of love, loss and heartbreak.

The story is told from the point of view of a man, Dino, writing to a son, Michele, whom he hasn’t seen for years, from Israel, after WWII. Dino wants Michele to understand how their lives were shaped and so he describes his life in Italy with his son’s mother, a woman whom he loved a great deal. Dino was a teacher and a Jew who marked the major Jewish holidays for the sake of his family but not much else. He fell in love with a good Catholic girl, Sonia, whose parents are wealthy, shallow, prejudiced and fascist sympathizers. Sonia’s parents in particular were not enthused with the prospective marriage, but objections were overcome, the two marred and have a son. All seemed to be well, but slowly their lives started to unravel as the anti-Jewish laws forced Dino out of his job, increasingly restricted his life, and even forced his parents to sell their successful hotel (which Dino thought would be his fallback after losing his teaching profession) to an employee before they would lose everything.

As Dino puts it: “I am talking about the others, those who cheered the Fascists on, while we few managed to glimpse the invisible and insidious web that seemed to be slowly covering our everyday lives, while a faint haze of the ridiculous descended over everything, a ridiculous that gradually turned into something grotesque. “

As a “half-Jew” Michele would have all avenues closed to him for education or in a profession, so Sonia’s family hatches a scheme whereby Dino and Sonia annul their marriage, Dino effectively admits to not being the father of his son, Sonia marries a family friend (who is, or was, also a friend of Dino), Dino and Sonia start to live separately. For a while they continue to see each other surreptitiously, but more and more they have less and less in common and the relationship spirals downward to the point where Dino simply leaves and goes to Palestine to start a new life, a life he manages to entice his parents to share and so they escape while other members of the family are arrested and shipped off to Auschwitz.

The story is well told. I don’t think it is on a par with The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, but it does illustrate how political regimes and fads and currents disrupt and destroy ordinary lives, how people struggle to stay alive, and the sacrifices they will make for those they love.

YThe jewish Husband moves slowly, but the prose is intense within many of the pages, more so during the last half of the book. I attribute the slowness to the fact that the book is written as a series of letters, and Dino is trying to tell his story in an exact manner. There are predictable moments, yet, for some readers, there might be one or two surprises within the story line. Levi writes with forthrightness and vivid imagery, as she tries to inflect how daily life played out during a tumultuous time period. She is sensitive to the issues of romance under adverse conditions, playing the fascist mindset against the Jews, and interjecting the conflicts of a Jewish-Catholic marriage under those circumstances.

There isn’t much written about fascism in Italy, and Levi puts a distinct face on the subject. She gives the reader much to ponder regarding the oppression of the Jews, within the confines of the Italian ghettos and within Italian society as a whole. She writes with clarity and cognizance regarding the daily restrictions placed upon the Jews in Italy during the fascist regime. The Jewish Husband is educational in that respect. I applaud Lia Levi for the historical information she infuses within the pages, and for that aspect, I recommend The Jewish Husband.½