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franklyfrank's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
vivianafascia's review against another edition
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
simo_na's review against another edition
5.0
La Storia parla di quello che dice in copertina: la Storia, "uno scandalo che dura da diecimila anni". La Storia, il susseguirsi di fatti della seconda guerra mondiale e del dopoguerra in apertura asettica di ogni capitolo; ma il libro li cita come anedottici, contingenti, si concentra sui protagonisti di questa epopea di oltre seicento pagine: poveracci dei quartieri popolari di Roma, disastrati colpiti dalla guerra, cani trovati chissà dove, banditi e partigiani. Persone che la Storia affligge, cavie e vittime di una mano che miete senza sosta da sempre. Come uno spettro nel romanzo si aggira Ida Ramundo, maestra elementare, padre calabrese e madre ebrea: vedova, vive a Roma con il figlio adolescente Nino, bulletto di quartiere, e rimane incinta a causa di una violenza di un soldato tedesco ubriaco. Nasce così Useppe, bambino gracile ma precoce, sognante e socievole, che vede le stelle e le rondini nei mobili di casa. Al piccolo coro della famiglia di Ida Ramundo si aggiungono altri disgraziati, che entrano ed escono nello scenario della Roma in guerra e post-bellica.
La Storia è un romanzo che odia la Storia: sono più reali le liste di avvenimenti che ci troviamo all'inizio di ogni capitolo, rigorosamente redatte, o le vicende di Iduzza, del piccolo Useppe, del teppista Nino? Riflette con violenza sugli scandali del periodo bellico, la deportazione degli ebrei, la fame, le violenze di fascisti e nazisti, così come parla con perizia dei sogni dei personaggi, con quel sentimento di magia e dilatazione della realtà che ho già trovato nell'Isola di Arturo. E, come sostengo da quando sono stata fulminata dal romanzo sovracitato, nessuno scrive meglio della Morante, brava ad anticiparci la morte di un personaggio e allo stesso tempo creare suspence inaudita, brava a descrivere la situazione politica italiana e gli incubi di Iduzza nella stessa pagina.
La Storia è un libro che folgora, che piaccia o non piaccia: non lo consiglierei a chi non adora le narrazioni "da romanzo russo", che dilatano il tempo e scavano nelle genealogie. Ma per il resto, non vedo come non possa piacere.
La Storia è un romanzo che odia la Storia: sono più reali le liste di avvenimenti che ci troviamo all'inizio di ogni capitolo, rigorosamente redatte, o le vicende di Iduzza, del piccolo Useppe, del teppista Nino? Riflette con violenza sugli scandali del periodo bellico, la deportazione degli ebrei, la fame, le violenze di fascisti e nazisti, così come parla con perizia dei sogni dei personaggi, con quel sentimento di magia e dilatazione della realtà che ho già trovato nell'Isola di Arturo. E, come sostengo da quando sono stata fulminata dal romanzo sovracitato, nessuno scrive meglio della Morante, brava ad anticiparci la morte di un personaggio e allo stesso tempo creare suspence inaudita, brava a descrivere la situazione politica italiana e gli incubi di Iduzza nella stessa pagina.
La Storia è un libro che folgora, che piaccia o non piaccia: non lo consiglierei a chi non adora le narrazioni "da romanzo russo", che dilatano il tempo e scavano nelle genealogie. Ma per il resto, non vedo come non possa piacere.
mimooo's review against another edition
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
accatone! not sure if elsa morante was a zionist or not bc the nakba occurred in 1948…..and how could that not merit comment in “history”……….. also sorry they could never make me hate stalin the most lied on world leader……. i can see the merit in this book for sure, i love nino and davide is an interesting character maybe self insert. in mean yea the world has and continues to go to shit but idk capitalism and communism do not lead to the same end and they are not the same………… in a way i respect the prescient blackpilled doomerism during the high tide of revolutionary optimism but i fundamentally disagree with her and im still with the partisans and Pasolini apparently………. ideology is important and a better world is possible.
_francilovesreading_'s review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
paolad's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
chiaramir97's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
dameverte's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.25
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
5.0
It is a difficult book to rate. May be that four star is that Stockalm syndrome showing up – it is a big book.
And it feels big; big and slow. Sometimes it appears to be badly edited. There are whole passages that only repeat the things. The prose isn’t the best thing but then I read only translation.
Still, it presents a very original worldview. The narrator is like normal omniscient narrators except that she is not omniscient since she is often pointing out things she doesn’t know about. Also, she seems to show Dickens like fondness for her characters. You know how Dickens sometimes talks about his characters, the way parents talk about their children, “Look how cute they are!” (and you are like “Yes, they are sweet” while you search your pocket your insulin pill.) That.
The thing is I don’t like kids, they give me creeps, room-one-o-one-e creeps. And this happens to be a story about a little bastard and his mother living through the Second World War. Not swearing, Useppe is actually a bastard. There are pages upon pages describing him doing ‘cute’ things (pronouncing words wrongly- ‘wy’ for ‘why’, making friends with animals etc). Never before I’ve felt like wanting to smother a fictional character so much. With camera focused on him for so much of time, you remember that age old idea that there is a lot to be learnt from children. But at the same time, Useppe is also a war kid and war did in the end got him. Towrds the end, he is physically unhealthy (not getting proper food during war time) and suffers from inexplicable mood swings. Having suffered upon losses at an early age, he is afraid of making new bonds etc.
The narrator’s cutification (?) doesn’t end with babies. It goes further into realm of animals. We have in this story – a street dog, a cat, her kittens, two canaries, more canaries, a mule, a rat, a rabbit, another street dog, a female dog, her puppies, sparrows, more sparrows... Many people in the story have pets which are at times their best and only friends. And animal are in fact important characters in the story. If you are kind of person who likes to watch videos of animals doing stupid things on youtube, you will love it. In the beginning narrator is only describing (in great detail) their actions; then slowly she starts guessing what they were trying to tell with their gestures and sounds; and by the end, we are treated with a conversation between a kid and dog. The dog told him a story to pass time.
Her cutesque view is extended to grownups as well. The narrator says of Ida, Useppa’s mother, that she is just a child in a grownup’s body. And by the end, it seems to be true for almost all the major characters in the story, they all seem to be really like children inside, only pretending to be grownups because they find themselves in a world where they are expected to act like grownups. Even the SS soldier who raped Ida in the beginning of the book is represented much like a lost kid and you can’t help feeling sorry for him. The soldiers who survived the war were suffering depression because of killing he had to do. The narrator extends her compassion to other underdogs too – Jews who died in camps, Jews who survived the camps, dead soldiers, their families, poor, homeless, those who suddenly lost their homes due to war, prostitutes etc.
And it was very well done. When she is not cutenizing the world, the narrator builds characters of great psychological depth – actually referencing Freud by name. The kid is suffering from a disease called grand mal; which in first stages causes ‘Violent convulsive fits with total loss of consciousness’. Narrator is often describing dreams of her characters. One of my favorite parts was when Ida finds herself walking anxiously in a dream with a weight on her shoulder, a weight which she quickly realizes to be her suckling, Useppe; since she is used to carry him around day in, day out.
And oh, a lot of it is about motherhood. The relationship between Ida and her son is one the best portrayal of parental bond I’ve seen. And there are at least four pregnancies within span of the book, of which two are of human beings.
So you have children, animals, adult children, mothers …
The wrongs seem to all come from governments (as usual). The chapters are grouped into sections, most sections are named after a war-year or post-war year. Each section begins with a brief description of political developments that took place throughout the whole world in that year. However the impact that those developments have on people of Morante’s world in that year is indirect and so far beyond their power, that the political heads may as well have been living in different world, like Greek gods torturing people according to their whims. Most of Morante’s people don’t question their fate and seems to be going through their lives despite everything; the few who do question do not even start to achieve anything with their efforts.
It is in the end, not so much a story about those who died in the war, but those who survived it – their suffering is best understood in image of that child (a scene from book) struggling, with an angst he can neither comprehend nor fight, and failing; finding the only vent to his frustration in that repeated moaning “Wy wy wy..”
And it feels big; big and slow. Sometimes it appears to be badly edited. There are whole passages that only repeat the things. The prose isn’t the best thing but then I read only translation.
Still, it presents a very original worldview. The narrator is like normal omniscient narrators except that she is not omniscient since she is often pointing out things she doesn’t know about. Also, she seems to show Dickens like fondness for her characters. You know how Dickens sometimes talks about his characters, the way parents talk about their children, “Look how cute they are!” (and you are like “Yes, they are sweet” while you search your pocket your insulin pill.) That.
The thing is I don’t like kids, they give me creeps, room-one-o-one-e creeps. And this happens to be a story about a little bastard and his mother living through the Second World War. Not swearing, Useppe is actually a bastard. There are pages upon pages describing him doing ‘cute’ things (pronouncing words wrongly- ‘wy’ for ‘why’, making friends with animals etc). Never before I’ve felt like wanting to smother a fictional character so much. With camera focused on him for so much of time, you remember that age old idea that there is a lot to be learnt from children. But at the same time, Useppe is also a war kid and war did in the end got him. Towrds the end, he is physically unhealthy (not getting proper food during war time) and suffers from inexplicable mood swings. Having suffered upon losses at an early age, he is afraid of making new bonds etc.
The narrator’s cutification (?) doesn’t end with babies. It goes further into realm of animals. We have in this story – a street dog, a cat, her kittens, two canaries, more canaries, a mule, a rat, a rabbit, another street dog, a female dog, her puppies, sparrows, more sparrows... Many people in the story have pets which are at times their best and only friends. And animal are in fact important characters in the story. If you are kind of person who likes to watch videos of animals doing stupid things on youtube, you will love it. In the beginning narrator is only describing (in great detail) their actions; then slowly she starts guessing what they were trying to tell with their gestures and sounds; and by the end, we are treated with a conversation between a kid and dog. The dog told him a story to pass time.
Her cutesque view is extended to grownups as well. The narrator says of Ida, Useppa’s mother, that she is just a child in a grownup’s body. And by the end, it seems to be true for almost all the major characters in the story, they all seem to be really like children inside, only pretending to be grownups because they find themselves in a world where they are expected to act like grownups. Even the SS soldier who raped Ida in the beginning of the book is represented much like a lost kid and you can’t help feeling sorry for him. The soldiers who survived the war were suffering depression because of killing he had to do. The narrator extends her compassion to other underdogs too – Jews who died in camps, Jews who survived the camps, dead soldiers, their families, poor, homeless, those who suddenly lost their homes due to war, prostitutes etc.
And it was very well done. When she is not cutenizing the world, the narrator builds characters of great psychological depth – actually referencing Freud by name. The kid is suffering from a disease called grand mal; which in first stages causes ‘Violent convulsive fits with total loss of consciousness’. Narrator is often describing dreams of her characters. One of my favorite parts was when Ida finds herself walking anxiously in a dream with a weight on her shoulder, a weight which she quickly realizes to be her suckling, Useppe; since she is used to carry him around day in, day out.
And oh, a lot of it is about motherhood. The relationship between Ida and her son is one the best portrayal of parental bond I’ve seen. And there are at least four pregnancies within span of the book, of which two are of human beings.
So you have children, animals, adult children, mothers …
“There is a story about a tigress who, in a chill solitude, kept herself and her cubs alive by licking the snow and distributing to her little ones some scraps of meat that she ripped from her own body with her teeth.”
The wrongs seem to all come from governments (as usual). The chapters are grouped into sections, most sections are named after a war-year or post-war year. Each section begins with a brief description of political developments that took place throughout the whole world in that year. However the impact that those developments have on people of Morante’s world in that year is indirect and so far beyond their power, that the political heads may as well have been living in different world, like Greek gods torturing people according to their whims. Most of Morante’s people don’t question their fate and seems to be going through their lives despite everything; the few who do question do not even start to achieve anything with their efforts.
It is in the end, not so much a story about those who died in the war, but those who survived it – their suffering is best understood in image of that child (a scene from book) struggling, with an angst he can neither comprehend nor fight, and failing; finding the only vent to his frustration in that repeated moaning “Wy wy wy..”