Reeds in the Wind

Rating:
Summary: Magic, entertaining and superbly written.
Review: If you're in for a good book, don't miss this one. It took me only two days to read it but it feels as if I had been for a few months in 19th century Sardinia.
Let the author make you enjoy torrid afternoons and magic nights in a world so distant from today's but where the same human values on which today's western society is based are there fully exposed for us to see.
Top marks, it'll be difficult for me to get on and enjoy reading another book right away.

Rating:
Summary: Thoughts from the Translator
Review: It seems paradoxical that Grazia Deledda could write such sexy novels, with characters driven by desire. She was born and raised in retro Sardinia, to become a faithful and devoted wife and mother. Short, plump, the antithesis of sexy, she wrote many volumes of short stories and novels with full-blooded themes, not to mention full-bodied. But subtly so. Her characters are very Sardinian-reticent in the expression of their desires that burn under the surface of the dialogue and action.

Rating:
Summary: A flavorful and evocative rendering of an old Italian past.
Review: Reeds in the Wind is a resounding success, for it is a literary work of art that is suffused with Sardinian folk culture, unwavering faith in Catholicism and vivid lore of the "dark beings who populate the Sardinian night..." Grazia Deledda's novel, set in the harsh, homely, bromidic Sardinian Galte (actually Galtelli) of Baronia, describes the arid, solitary landscape, where the sun continuously emits a slanting, hot coppery ray of light upon the reddened earth, and the melancholy panorama is adorned only by dilapidated huts and a cemetery abounding with dust and bones; hence, the attention of the reader is immediately focused not on the torpidity of the environment, but rather, on the inhabitants of it: Effix, Giacinto, Grixenda, Don Predu, Pottoi, Zuannantoni, Milese, Kallina and the three spinster sisters: Ruth, Ester and Noemi Pintor. The electric liveliness, the pulse, that normally spreads up and out in cosmopolitan cities is quite palpable. The lust and vibrancy of municipal life can be oozed out at the ends of a clenched fist, for the urbanity is the life blood that keeps people sane, but that is not the case in this territory, because it is the antipode of urbane. It is a vacuous hole that takes more than it gives, and tradition is the cudgel that keeps the residents at bay, preventing most of them from ever leaving and striving for growth, love and happiness. It is a land where the dead are not simply dominant, they are the rulers: P.3: "Effix could hear the sound that the panas-women who died in childbirth-made while washing their clothes down by the river, beating them with a dead man's shin bone, and he believed he saw the ammattadore (the elf with seven caps where he hid his treasure) jumping about under the almond woods, followed by vampires with steel tails. It was the elf that caused the branches and rocks to glitter under the moon. And along with the evil spirits were spirits of unbaptized babies-white spirits that flew through the air changing themselves into silvery clouds behind the moon. And dwarfs and janas-the little faries who stay in their small rock houses during the day weaving gold cloth on their golden looms-where dancing in the large phillyrea bushes, while giants looked out from the rocks on the moonstruck mountains, holding the bridles of enormous horses that only they can mount, squinting to see if down there within the expanse of evil euphorbia a dragon was lurking. Or if the legendary cananea, living from the time of Christ, was slithering around on the sandy marshland." A fourth Pintor sister-Donna Lia-does escape the drudgery of mediocrity, marrying and having a child later named Giacinto who later visits his aunts. But to them, that is anything but pleasing: P.19: "...it seems like you aren't happy about Don Giacinto." "Do I have to sing? He's not the Messiah!" That unpleasant tone swims across the bulk of the novel; it is a tone of harsh indifference. Donna Lia committed the ultimate sin by leaving the Pintor House; thus, her whole being becomes a sin and so too does her offspring, despite Giacinto's later desires to rectify past wrongs; he becomes an omen-bad luck. In life, in order for there to be a sense of unity and forgivness, somebody has to make the first move: P.79: "...If children can love one another, why must we old people hate each other? The remedy is in us." But that is easier said than done. Traditionalism is strongly adhered to, and if faith can not heal the wanton needs and frivolity of those who feel they must escape because of the throttling suffocation that they are enduring, then the battle of good and evil becomes bigger and bigger: P.154: "Yes, once there was a king who had his people worship trees and animals, and even fire. God was offended and made the king's servants turn so bad they plotted to kill their master. And so they did. Yes, he made them worship a golden God. That is why there is so much love for money in the world, and even relatives kill relatives for money." But Effix, who is the servant to the Pintor women, is not a servant in the traditional sense; he is a servant of God, a human angel who tries to heal old wounds, mistrust, suffering. His varied tasks in this novel are not easy ones, but he rises to the complexities of human nature and later ascends to the glory of God. The characters in Reeds in the Wind truly embody human frailties and fatalism in, oddly, a lyrical but brusque manner. Suffering is human nature, and so, aren't we all Reeds in the Wind, pushed down by evil only to rise again?

Rating:
Summary: Not her best but still worth reading
Review: This is the 5th book of Grazia Deladda that I have read and I don't believe that it lives up to her better works. The best book of hers that I read is "After the Divorce". That book made me want to read more and it has been hard to track down other works by her. Since discovering the wonders of modern technology, I have been able to order other of her works. Some like "The Mother and the Priest" gave me a message to ponder while others gave me more of an appreciation of life in Sardinia 75 years ago (which is more like life 175 years ago in other European locales). That flavor of life in her native island is always worth the price of admission to her books and "Reeds in the Wind" is no exception.

In this novella (all of her books are short) we see the story of a family of aging sisters who are so down on their luck that their nobility is in name only. We start the story by meeting the sister's servant, Efix. As the tale unfolds we see that he is the person who runs the operation. He does all the work, makes most of the arrangements, and smoothes many a feather. Well, things happen, people come and go, and we end up with an ending that lets us appreciate how an poor, unpaid servant saves the day for his masters (mistresses?). Along the way we again view a society and its' customs that would be otherwise unknown to us. It is poignant at the end when the sisters take care of Efix after he is no longer able to care for himself. The story of the servant managing the affairs of the sisters and the sisters caring for the servant gives a nice twist to a society that was obviously not used to such role reversals.

If it were possible, I would rate this book 3 1/2 by the 5 star grading system. That's not to say that this isn't a good book. Rather it's to say that I know that the author has done better.

Rating:
Summary: Not her best but still worth reading
Review: This is the 5th book of Grazia Deladda that I have read and I don't believe that it lives up to her better works. The best book of hers that I read is "After the Divorce". That book made me want to read more and it has been hard to track down other works by her. Since discovering the wonders of modern technology, I have been able to order other of her works. Some like "The Mother and the Priest" gave me a message to ponder while others gave me more of an appreciation of life in Sardinia 75 years ago (which is more like life 175 years ago in other European locales). That flavor of life in her native island is always worth the price of admission to her books and "Reeds in the Wind" is no exception.

In this novella (all of her books are short) we see the story of a family of aging sisters who are so down on their luck that their nobility is in name only. We start the story by meeting the sister's servant, Efix. As the tale unfolds we see that he is the person who runs the operation. He does all the work, makes most of the arrangements, and smoothes many a feather. Well, things happen, people come and go, and we end up with an ending that lets us appreciate how an poor, unpaid servant saves the day for his masters (mistresses?). Along the way we again view a society and its' customs that would be otherwise unknown to us. It is poignant at the end when the sisters take care of Efix after he is no longer able to care for himself. The story of the servant managing the affairs of the sisters and the sisters caring for the servant gives a nice twist to a society that was obviously not used to such role reversals.

If it were possible, I would rate this book 3 1/2 by the 5 star grading system. That's not to say that this isn't a good book. Rather it's to say that I know that the author has done better.