Ferocity

March 1, 2017
Lagioia makes his enthralling English-language debut, translated into dazzling prose by Shugaar.Amid what is likely the most stirring passage ever written in all of literature about a gas station sky dancer, a naked, blood-covered woman emerges from the brush, stumbling past "tiny, fuzzy-winged creatures" that sway in the dark as though "tied to the moon's invisible thread," and wanders onto the highway. This is Clara, eldest daughter of the Salvemini family of Bari, whose death that night is ruled a suicide by purported leap off a parking garage. Her half brother, Michele, with whom Clara cherished an almost supernatural bond as a child, born of an affair and incompletely absorbed into the family when his mother died in childbirth, is plagued by suspicions about his sister's death. "In the intricate forest of grief, a path emerges," and, as Michele questions his flatly dismal past and his father's motives, a deep substratum of insidious corruption and habitual degradation emerges, threatening not only the tenuous stability of the Salvemini family, but the very ground beneath their feet. Beware comparisons to popular modern family sagas: this is a complex novel, intricately orchestrated and, above all, inventively composed. The past and present pile up and fuse, dissolve, reunite, with characters living present action and recalled memory all at once; a single action may be refracted and revisited from several vantage points, filtered through various characters' perceptions. Grammatical subjects flip abruptly from one line to the next, and it is only through Logioia's often virtuosic character development that the attentive reader will remain oriented to the progression of events. Not recommended for the casual reader (or easily scandalized), but those who persevere will be swept up in a rich and rewarding literary experience. A mesmerizing exploration of failure, resilience, and profound, multifaceted loss.

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August 21, 2017
In Lagioia’s powerful novel, Clara Salvemini’s violent death is ruled a suicide, causing her estranged brother, Michele, to return to the family villa to investigate. Growing up, Clara was the only member of the family to treat Michele, a son of the patriarch’s mistress, with any kindness. His return reminds the family of their shame at his confounding childhood behavior, his stints in mental hospitals, and his very existence. As he tries to understand the family’s story of Clara leaping to her death, he discovers the rotten core of his father’s real estate empire that relies on bribery, shady accounting, and blackmail. In particular, the family’s most recent development of resort condos has fallen under suspicion for its environmental impacts and threatens to ruin all the Salvemini patriarch has worked for. Lagioia drifts between timelines as Clara’s family, lovers, and acquaintances slowly reveal how she drew them into the web of the Salveminis and how they witnessed her unraveling. This oblique kaleidoscopic approach allows the mystery to slowly and captivatingly resolve while offering a layered portrait of contemporary Italian life and the abuses of power that money can excuse.

September 1, 2017

When we first meet Clara Salvemini, daughter of the corrupt, manipulative head of a formidable building empire, she is caught in glaring headlights as she stumbles bloodied and naked down the highway. Later, we're told that that her death is a suicide, and we know something disturbing is going on. Lagioia, who won the Strega Prize for this remarkable novel, portrays a family wrecked by patriarchal stranglehold; a daughter who both defends and defies her father; and the deep rottenness of a society that bends low to power, which make this work biting social commentary as well as edge-of-seat reading. The Salvemini children include oldest Ruggero, unable to escape his father's sway; self-indulged youngest Gioia, seemingly a child at 26; and Michele, son of his father's mistress, uneasily integrated into the family; he's awkward, antisocial, and closely bonded to Clara. The indelibly drawn Clara, riven by alcohol and pills, is a serial adulteress and participant in hard porn, and her mysterious death shakes her immediate world. The narrative is satisfyingly packed and textured beyond the needs of basic plot; often, two events or conversations take place simultaneously, dizzily clarifying the characters' mental states and motivations. VERDICT A rich and readable cautionary tale for strong-minded readers.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2017
Though Lagioia's English-languagedebut, his fourth book and the winner of Italy's Strega Prize, will draw comparisons to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet, it deserves its own classification as complex, darkly absorbing, and mysterious literary fiction. In the southern coastal city of Bari, Clara Salvemini, daughter of a powerful construction magnate, stumbles naked and bloody into the path of a truck on its way back to Taranto, a more industrial city on the other side of Italy's heel. After her death is ruled a suicide, her half-brother, Michele, the closest of her three siblings, is the last to even know she's gone. When Michele returns to Bari from Rome, where he works as a journalist, he's haunted by memories, grief, questions about his sister's death, and his own, simmering demons. Drilling down deeply into many main and secondary characters' stories, Lagioia's prosein Shugaar's translationdepicts a family living far from the ease it projects; loyalties and betrayals painted in shades of gray; and a violently alive setting that plays off its characters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)