Word: maraini
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...Malaise, replete with an enticing picture of author Dacia Maraini on the dust jacket, comes highly recommended. Written by an Italian girl in her mid-twenties, this novel of the "young, postwar generation" won the second annual $10,000 Formentor Prize, an award established by thirteen publishers in as many countries to encourage and publicize young writing. Each of the thirteen houses, including Grove Press of the United States, will publish Miss Maraini's work in its own country...
...that's not a bad theme for a novel. Every story has been told before, so one cannot hold that against Miss Maraini. But there is one major flaw to this particular rendition. Enrica apparently finds happiness only in her relationship with Cesare, an unfeeling and mercenary law student, who continues to sleep with her until 10 days before his wedding. Yet Enrica's love is totally inexplicable, incredibly far-fetched. One gets no feeling that her redemption lies in love, because it just simply is not there, despite her repeated pleadings to share Cesare...
...failure to communicate Enrica's love, Miss Maraini has reduced much of her heroine's protestations to absurdity. On the other hand, if Enrica is indeed incapable of love, and has just been fooling herself and the reader with all her sexual antics, the hopeful note on which the book ends is unbelievable...
...Miss Maraini's style is incredibly spare and direct, and reads easily. But it is almost totally devoid of any poetry, and one is left more with a feeling of having read a newspaper account than a novel. What's more, it is boring...
...curious way this could be Miss Maraini's point. By building in the reader a feelng of ennui perhaps she hopes to communicate that quality in Enrica's world. About the only variety in her life, and this too is minimal, are the scenes of her love-making. Usually it is in Cesare's bedroom, but once he takes her on the shore of a lake, and another boy makes her on the damp floor of an abandoned workman's shed...