A well told tale of tragic love written in a simple but effective style, this captures the poverty, prejudices and superstitions of a remote peasant village in nineteenth century Sardinia. It is an interesting contrast to The Leopard. February 2019 ( )

I will just say that I read Cold Comfort Farm some years ago, and I could not read this book without thinking of Sardinian Starkadders. The lyrical descriptions of scenery and the tragic story of Constantino and Giovanna left me entirely unaffected, in fact more inclined to childish sniggering. I didn't appreciate this work, and it's all my own fault.

A word of caution. Try and get Susan Ashe's English translation. There is a much older English translation available but it changes the ending completely. We discovered this during our book club discussion when someone started talking about the terrible ending. It wasn't the ending in the Ashe version or in the original Italian. As it turns out, Deledda did not write a terrible ending. Her story of Constantino and Giovanna ends in a way that is entirely in keeping with the rest of her creation, while the altered ending is disgracefully sentimental and so different in tone from the rest of the story as to be utterly jarring.

To get the best experience possible, stick with the most recent translation and try not to think about Seth and Reuben.

After the Divorce by Grazia Deledda

Grazia Deledda was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1926, the second woman to be so honored. Many of her novels depict the day-to-day lives of Sardinian peasants, and such peasants are the subject of After the Divorce. Giovanna and Costantino are a young happily married couple with an infant son, when Costantino is wrongly accused and convicted of murder. He is sent to prison on the mainland. Giovanna and their son and her mother, face a life of penury and starvation.

When Giovanna's mother learns that the law has been changed to allow a woman whose husband is in prison for a long time to divorce her husband, she begins to pressure Giovanni to divorce Costantino. Brontu Dejas, a wealthy (by peasant standards) young man who Giovanna had spurned in favor of Costantino, alleges he still loves her and wants to marry her. Giovanna fights the pressure as long as she can, but eventually succumbs to the pressure. After she marries Brontu, she learns that he is a drunken brute, and he and her mother-in-law treat her no better than a slave. Tragically soon after she divorces and remarries, the true murderer is discovered and Costantino is released and returns to the village.

Deledda writes poetically and lyrically--for example, this description of Giovanna's mother: "...a tall tragic-looking figure all in black. The gaunt, yellow face, shaped like that of some bird of prey...two brilliant green spots indicated eyes, deep-set, overhung by fierce, heavy brows and surrounded by livid circles." She is also clearly knowledgeable about peasant life and practices. For example, she describes a rite of exorcism for the cure of a tarantula bite which is nothing less than surreal---the victim must first wallow in a dung heap, and then roast in an oven, all the while accompanied by twenty women "chanting in melancholy monotone" a song of exorcism. Not surprisingly, victims rarely survived. (Although I have heard that tarantula bites are not necessarily fatal.)

Highly recommended. ( )