Animals of the Alpine Front

Zancanella (A Storm in the Stars) offers an evocative if lukewarm novel of love and displacement in WWI Italy. Shortly before the war, teenage Carlo Coltura and his father return from a Colorado mining camp to the family home in Trento, in a remote section of Northern Italy. A parallel narrative follows Teresa Miori, a teenage girl who moves from Ulfano to Trento, where she finds work as a servant. One day in town, Carlo has a chance meeting with Teresa. When the war begins, the region is occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces, who conscript Carlo and put him to work on constructing a mountain fortress. To help lift his spirits, he writes letters to Teresa. For her part, Teresa lives uneasily under the Austro-Hungarian soldiers who have taken over the villa where she works. With the war over, she and Carlo meet again by accident in Trento and begin a tentative romance. Zancanella describes the invaders with striking surrealism (a group of caped cyclists look less like soldiers than “infernal specters escaped from a nightmare, or ravens turned into men”), and portrays battle scenes with unflinching realism (Carlo steps on a “grey gobbet he feared was some man’s brains”). Unfortunately, the love affair between Carlo and Teresa is tepid at best and ends on an unsatisfying note. Readers will be disappointed. (July)