Almarina Review

In Nisida, a small island off the coast of Naples, there is a youth prison where Elisabetta teaches Maths, the only place where the widow interacts with other human beings, day after day. Her routine of loneliness is broken by Almarina, a young Romanian girl, and the connection they form.

General Impressions

I started this book really excited about it for a multitude of reasons: I haven't read much translated Italian fiction yet, the cover is absolutely magnificent and it's a very short book so even if it's forgettable, it wouldn't demand too much of my time. On the other hand, I was also very afraid of what I was about to embark on: this is European literature which can be weird, very sad, or outright incomprehensible, sometimes all at the same time.

Thankfully Almarina was a fairly straightforward story, with working-class characters that lived in a complex world where they live with injustice but can do little to change it, no matter how much they want to. At the same time, it is also a book where the smallest act of kindness and understanding matters and can have massive consequences, if hard to predict when or what kind.

Elisabetta and her fellow teachers may seem impervious to their pupil's feelings and inner lives at first, seeing them only as an unpleasant job that needs to be done and they are the ones paid to do it. As the book goes on, you realize that it's not that they don't care but that they can't allow themselves to show it since they have no power over what happens to these children. Their caring has to be done in an unassuming and detached way.

Throughout this story, there is a real effort to see these children as victims of their circumstances instead of just criminals as we learn more about a government and system that prefers to keep children locked up rather than fixing the root causes of poverty and criminality both between the lines and written down.

Conclusions

I finished this book filled with hope for humanity and the small acts of kindness that keep us going. Almarina is a very unassuming story filled with a lot of pain at times but more importantly, filled with humanity and hope.

Thanks to John Murrays for sending me this book proof.

Rating: 4/5