cover image The Missing Pages

The Missing Pages

Christina Comencini, Cristina Comencini. Pantheon Books, $22 (268pp) ISBN 978-0-679-43076-6

Diamond-hard prose brings a chill clarity to this first novel by a Roman writer. Federica, the brilliant youngest daughter of a shrewd and successful businessman, gradually retreats into total silence; the doctors supply a diagnosis of aphasia and regression, but no one can locate the cause of the crisis. She leaves lengthy notes for her father, slowly affording him (and the reader) clues to a life she'd kept hidden--a six-month-long affair with a man she knows only as Marco, whose abrupt disappearance seems as inexplicable as Federica's muteness. Comencini conjures up exceptional persons as vehicles for her observations about ordinary society, its cruel combinations of intimacy and alienation, insight and ignorance. If her novel relies unduly on shock value, as in the Hollywood-style revelation of Marco's ultimate fate, this seems more a mark of Comencini's inexperience than of an inability to plot. Her voice, strong and fearless, promises much; hers is a truly auspicious debut. (Feb.)