The Brittle Age

Di Pietrantonio (A Sister Story) offers a gut-wrenching excavation of generational trauma rooted in a 1992 double homicide in the Apennine mountains of central Italy. Lucia, a physiotherapist, has lived her whole life near the now abandoned alpine campground still owned by her father, Rocco, where the murders took place decades earlier. Her 20-year-old daughter, Amanda, has left for college in Milan, but when the Covid-19 pandemic forces her back home, she stops studying and keeps to her room. Lucia’s narration shifts fluidly between past and present, as Rocco’s insistence on deeding the campground to Lucia conjures memories of the murders. Lucia was 20 when two young women were raped and killed by a laborer working for one of the local shepherds. The perpetrator also nearly killed Lucia’s best friend, Doralice Damiani, from whom Lucia has been estranged since the attack. As Lucia weighs her uneasy inheritance, Di Pietrantonio doles out the details of the crime, the reasons for the friends’ rupture, and the cause of Amanda’s withdrawal, revealing striking parallels between mother and daughter. In crystalline prose, this contemplative novel offers a subtle but piercing meditation on the complex dynamics between parents and children. (June)