∎ PDF The Silent Duchess FP Classics Dacia Maraini Dick Kitto Elspeth Spottiswood Anna CamaitiHostert 9781558612228 Books

The Silent Duchess FP Classics Dacia Maraini Dick Kitto Elspeth Spottiswood Anna CamaitiHostert 9781558612228 Books

Download As PDF : The Silent Duchess FP Classics Dacia Maraini Dick Kitto Elspeth Spottiswood Anna CamaitiHostert 9781558612228 Books

The Silent Duchess FP Classics Dacia Maraini Dick Kitto Elspeth Spottiswood Anna CamaitiHostert 9781558612228 Books

This book has an almost cinematic quality as each chapter in the life of our heroine unfolds. So beautifully written and conceived, yet another story of a woman repressed, this time, deaf dumb and married off at 14 to her uncle. Dacia Maraini places herself inside this character with the greatest of creativity and compassion. There are beautiful passages that describe the sensory world according the our deaf and dumb Duchess, how she perceives moments in nature, how she senses someone's mood, what and how she writes, her varied relationships with her children.
This is a story for all women and sadly so, a story as old as time and that in its way still plays out in our modern world,
and makes one wonder if there will ever be a day when the woman is not suppressed by society and men. Despite the tragedies that our Duchess faces she is the ultimate survivor, and although this story is dark there is redemption here which takes the form of a repressed memory revealed. This is also a vivid window into practices in place in this level of society of Sicily in the 16th century.


Tags : The Silent Duchess (FP Classics) [Dacia Maraini, Dick Kitto, Elspeth Spottiswood, Anna Camaiti-Hostert] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div>Finalist for the International Man Booker Prize, winner of the Premio Campiello, short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award upon its first English-language publication in the UK,Dacia Maraini, Dick Kitto, Elspeth Spottiswood, Anna Camaiti-Hostert,The Silent Duchess (FP Classics),The Feminist Press at CUNY,155861222X,Historical - General,FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS Children with Special Needs,FICTION Historical General,FICTION Literary,FICTION Women,Fiction,Fiction - Historical,Fiction Historical,Historical fiction,Italian (Language) Contemporary Fiction,Modern fiction,SOCIAL SCIENCE Women's Studies

The Silent Duchess FP Classics Dacia Maraini Dick Kitto Elspeth Spottiswood Anna CamaitiHostert 9781558612228 Books Reviews

There's not much interaction between the characters in this long slow-moving novel. The heroine, who is mute and deaf after an early childhood trauma, is cut off from her world to such an extent that the novel lacks all immediacy. Too bad, because the descriptive prose about Sicily is interesting; there's just a great lack of emotion.
Dacia Maraini is celebrated in italy, where her books are bestsellers and win important prizes, but she hasn't yet caught on in the United States, where translated fiction gets slighted and there's room for only two or three writers from each foreign country. I hope the Silent Duchess changes that. It's an extraordinary book -- a historical novel set in 18th century Sicily, whose heroine, Marianna Ucria, the deaf and dumb aristocrat of the title, manages, in small and subtle ways, to become an independent spirit despite a forced marriage to her uncle at age 13. The writing is piquant and evocative-- Sicily has never seemed so intense and alive--sights, smells, food). This is a book with everything you'd find in a historical potboiler-- sex, love, violence, family, incest, spectacle, tragedy. But it's a serious word of art, moving, sensuous, thought-provoking. One of the best novels I've read all year!
Through the story of a deaf and mute duchess, author Dacia Maraini describes the stultifying culture of Sicily in the early 1700's. There is a strong class system with nobles living well, but precariously. They control the lives of those below their rank and on a whim they can pluck someone from miserable poverty and "elevate" them to servitude.

Noble women, who are well dressed and well fed, are similarly moved around, but their fate is determined more by strategy than by whim. The sons are not always pleased with the match made by their parents, but beauty can help the ease a loveless marriage... in the beginning. In this culture, everyone is vulnerable, and no one is happy. Mosquitos and the disease are ever present.

The people are preoccupied with ceremony and rank. The culture looks inward "To confront other minds, other ideas, is considered in principle an act of perfidy." (p.49). The Duchess is an exception, in her physical isolation, books are her communication. While she has a life of the mind, she cannot escape the culture. While she performs acts of kindness, she understands and uses the tools of control for those she outranks. She will not or cannot follow her heart.

This book is beautifully written. Characters and the tension they inject are poetically drawn, be they major characters such as Don Pietro, who in every scene exudes his technical status as "uncle husband" or minor characters such as that of Guiseppa of whom it is said to be "inconceivable" that she is not married at 23. Many scenes are exquisite depictions of time and place such as the complex upstairs/downstairs relationship of the Duchess and Fila who has been gifted to her, the funeral of Don Pietro and the business matters that follow it, how Marianna seeks a wife for Saro, and the picnic in the vineyard to name a few.

There is an Afterward by Anna Camaiti Hostert. But for the revelation of one plot element, this would have been better as a preface. Its information on author's background and Hostert's interpretation of how Sicily's 1700's inwardness and social structure impoverished the island can better inform the text if they are read first.

This is an excellent novel and I highly recommend it to those who appreciate historical fiction for what it says about place and time.
I was required to read this for a class of mine, and while there were sections of text that I enjoyed, over all, the extreme descriptions made the book unreadable at times, and over all painfully boring.
Kept my interest. Loved every minute reading it. Would like more books by author. Just goes to show you not to envy.
Beautifully written. Not quite Lampedusa's "The Leopard" but a good companion piece.
This book has an almost cinematic quality as each chapter in the life of our heroine unfolds. So beautifully written and conceived, yet another story of a woman repressed, this time, deaf dumb and married off at 14 to her uncle. Dacia Maraini places herself inside this character with the greatest of creativity and compassion. There are beautiful passages that describe the sensory world according the our deaf and dumb Duchess, how she perceives moments in nature, how she senses someone's mood, what and how she writes, her varied relationships with her children.
This is a story for all women and sadly so, a story as old as time and that in its way still plays out in our modern world,
and makes one wonder if there will ever be a day when the woman is not suppressed by society and men. Despite the tragedies that our Duchess faces she is the ultimate survivor, and although this story is dark there is redemption here which takes the form of a repressed memory revealed. This is also a vivid window into practices in place in this level of society of Sicily in the 16th century.