L'isola di Arturo - Supernormal Reads

Paperback

Published by Einaudi.

ISBN:: 978-88-06-22264-2

(1 review)

Arturo, il guerresco ragazzo dal nome di una stella, vive in un’isola tra spiagge e scogliere, pago di sogni fantastici. Non si cura di vestiti né di cibi. È stato allevato con latte di capra. La vita per lui è promessa solo di imprese e di libertà assoluta. E ora ricorda. Queste sono le sue memorie, dall’idillio solitario alla scoperta della vita: l’amore, l’amicizia, il dolore, la disperazione. Secondo romanzo della Morante dopo Menzogna e sortilegio (1948), L’isola di Arturo confermò tutte le qualità della scrittrice romana: l’impasto di elementi realistici e fiabeschi, la forte suggestione del linguaggio. Arturo, come Elisa in Menzogna e sortilegio, “si porta addosso la croce di far parte non di un oggi ma di un sempre”.

29 editions

ralentina reviewed L'isola di Arturo by Elsa Morante

Manhood in the making

5 stars

Content warning Minor spoilers!

The book's narrator is Arturo, a boy growing up in almost complete solitude in Procida, near Neaples. His mum died whilst giving birth, and he was raised by a local farmer who fed him goat milk. He imagines himself a hero, a knight, a soldier or a pirate, and spends his day swimming, walking around the island with his only friend, a dog named Immacolatella, and reading adventure books. That, and waiting for the return of his father Wihlem, who visits unpredictably, and whom the boys adores. In the eyes of Arturo, Wihlem embodies the qualities of a real man: he is brave, handsome (blond, even!), virile and free-spirited. When Arturo is fourteen, Wihlem brings home a new wife, a Neapolitan girl of sixteen, and Arturo's world changes...

Arturo is a very unlikeable protagonist: misogynistic, arrogant, often crueld. He's also very human, and as such a touch endearing. So that, while the book's atmosphere is almost fantastic - sometimes similar to a fairy tale, sometimes of a classical myths - the realism in Arturo's portrayal is incredibly convincing, almost painful.