Keep right on to the end of the ....

I would categorise myself as a naive reader: rather than luxuriating in the writer's exquisite prose, my main motivation when I'm reading a novel is to find out what happens next. Consequently I've never been able to understand those readers - and I've taught a few - who turn to the last page of a book before beginning to read it. I would never have bothered reading Tom Jones or Great Expectations if I'd known the identity of Tom or Estella's parents before turning the first page.

   This doesn't mean, however, that a strong plot is necessary to my enjoyment. Reading Tristram Shandy or Ulysses solely for their plots would be a disappointing exercise, yet few books have brought me greater pleasure. Nor does it mean that a good novel doesn't bear re-reading even though you now know what happens. There will always be fresh discoveries to be made - but for me that first virginal encounter is essential.

   Yesterday I finished reading Margaret Mazzantini's Venuto al mondo. It took me a long time: I guess about three weeks to read the first half, and a day and a half to read the second. The problem with the first half of the book was that I thought the whole of the plot had been revealed by the end of the first couple of chapters. The thrice-married protagonist, Gemma, is sterile. However she has a son Pietro, fathered by her deceased second husband, Diego, on a surrogate mother. End of story.

   The novel begins in medias res and much of the first half is spent recounting her abortive attempts to conceive and, subsequently, to find a surrogate. In other words to fill in the details of what the reader already knew. I only persevered with the book because it was well written, but as a naive reader my heart wasn't in it.

   What I hadn't reckoned with was la Mazzantini's masterly use of the unreliable narrator. Suddenly, in a magnificent coup de theatre, all my assumptions were turned upside down as I realised that, in reality, I'd completely misunderstood what was happening. From there on, reading the book was no longer a chore but a race to the finish.

   There is an English translation, Twice Born, and if it does justice to the original I'd strongly recommend reading it. With one proviso: you need a strong stomach. Much of the novel is set during the siege of Sarajevo and la Mazzantini doesn't spare us the details. In a previous post I wrote that, in comparison to Hans Fallada's war-time Berlin, life in Camilleri's ' mafiosi-ridden Sicily seemed to have escaped from Enid Blyton's Sunny Smiles'. The same can be said of Fallada's Berlin in relation to la Mazzantini's Sarajevo.

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