A doting Nonna, a bewitchingly beautiful girl on the balcony across the street and the ‘pit of the dead’ below the courtyard. This is the world of Mimi, our 9-year-old hero in The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan by Domenico Starnone. First love, death, class and Neapolitan passion mix up beautifully in this coming-of-age story set in 1950s Italy.
Our protagonist and narrator can do no wrong in the eyes of his long widowed Nonna. Meanwhile, everyone in the household, not to mention the father, treats her like part of the furniture. ‘I don’t think I even loved her that much’ Mimi divulges, revealing a poorly hidden disdain for her working-class background and Neapolitan dialect.
Meanwhile, our hero falls head of heels in love with the girl ‘from Milan’ living across the street, an unobtainable beauty whose family seems infinitely more sophisticated than his own. It’s a love so passionate that when his friend Lello also shows an interest in the girl, Mimi challenges him to a duel to death with his grand-father’s imaginary sword.
As the title hints, death does indeed come, but to the girl from Milan not to Lello. How to move on? Can he bring her back from ‘the pit of the dead’? Nonna, whose own husband died at the tender age of 22, knows a thing or two about death and, suddenly, her life rises from the ashes of old age and domesticity in Mimi’s mind.
Mimi wants to shed his social class, to be a writer and an intellectual. He signs up for glottology (the science of language) and papyrology (study of manuscript) courses at University (no, I didn’t know what this was either). Ironically, Nonna comes to the rescue with her knowledge of Neapolitan dialect.
The passions of first love, the intensity of childhood experiences and the unreliability of memories are beautifully portrayed by Starnone. Perhaps the most moving part of this novel is the relationship between Nonna and Mimi, a self-less unconditional love requited by an ambivalent love, a situation many a teenage parent will recognise.
Domenico Starnone has long been rumoured to be the person behind the mysterious Elena Ferrante and her bestselling Neapolitan quartet. I don’t have a strong opinion either way, but I can see why that rumour has persisted. The style of The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan is uncannily similar to Elena Ferrante’s books.
The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan by Domenico Starnone is translated by Oonagh Stransky and published by Europe Editions, 139 pages.
If you enjoyed this, you might want to read Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults or My Brilliant Friend.
