Review of "For They Have Sown the Wind"
Review of For They Have Sown the Wind
by Alessandro Perissinoto and translated from Italian by Cindy Stanphill
Giacomo Musso, a thirty-five-year-old teacher, is led by love, or perhaps by chance, to incarceration in the maximum-security wing of the Novara penitentiary. He protests his innocence while holding the newspaper with a photo of the mutilated corpse of his wife. Out of desperation, Giacomo decides to tell the story of his life—that is, the series of events that inevitably led him to this cell. Their marriage was not a red-hot love affair, but rather something that grew slowly and steadily—a love meant to last. He and his wife, Shirin, decided to move back to Molini, the town in the Piedmontese mountains where Giacomo was born, when he grew homesick. Shirin wanted to move to Molini because she needed the security of Giacomo’s roots after escaping from Iran. But even in Molini, she remained a foreigner, treated first with intrusive curiosity and then with mistrust. This nonbeliever, this atheist made the mistake of turning to the elaborate religiosity of her compatriots. Now nothing is left of her or of their love, except for the memories Giacomo writes down in his diary in the hope that perhaps he can create a better ending to the story.
MY REVIEW: I wanted to read a foreign novel that was translated to English and this book sounded intriguing to me. It was interesting to a point and then the details seemed to overpower the interaction between the characters and there were long portions where there was no interaction between the characters. The story did include prejudice against the main female character simply because she was Iranian. She did nothing to deserve the prejudice except her physical appearance as she dressed English at that time. The hatred and animosity eventually drove her to leave her husband and begin to live and dress as an Iranian female. Giacomo was in prison from the very beginning of the book for supposedly killing her. I wanted to resolve the question of whether in fact he had killed her. That issue was never resolved for me in his journal and description of the photographs he had in his possession while in his prison cell. The book left me confused and irritated due to this fact. I do not recommend this book. It was well-written and for that reason I rate it 3 Stars, but I did not like the book.
I received a free pdf version of this book from netgalley in exchange for my honest review.
Meet the Author:
A lecturer at the University of Turin and the author of several reviews, Alessandro Perissonotto made his fiction debut in 1997 with the detective story, L'anno che ucicisero Rosetta (Sellerio), which was followed by La canzone di Colombano and Treno 8017 (Sellerio, 2000 and 2003). In 2004 he published an epistolary noir with Rizzoli entitled, Al mio giudice (Winner of the Grinzane Cavour Prize in 2005 for Best Italian Fiction), followed in 2006 by Una piccola storia ignobile (Rizzoli), a series on the psychologist Anna Pavesi,who returns in L'ultima notte biana and L'ultima notte bianca and L'orchestra del Titanic. In 2008 he released La societa dell'indagine (Bompiani), followed by Per vendetta (2009). His works have been published in several European countries and in Japan. He is a contributor to La Stampa in Turin and IlMattino in Naples.
by Alessandro Perissinoto and translated from Italian by Cindy Stanphill
Giacomo Musso, a thirty-five-year-old teacher, is led by love, or perhaps by chance, to incarceration in the maximum-security wing of the Novara penitentiary. He protests his innocence while holding the newspaper with a photo of the mutilated corpse of his wife. Out of desperation, Giacomo decides to tell the story of his life—that is, the series of events that inevitably led him to this cell. Their marriage was not a red-hot love affair, but rather something that grew slowly and steadily—a love meant to last. He and his wife, Shirin, decided to move back to Molini, the town in the Piedmontese mountains where Giacomo was born, when he grew homesick. Shirin wanted to move to Molini because she needed the security of Giacomo’s roots after escaping from Iran. But even in Molini, she remained a foreigner, treated first with intrusive curiosity and then with mistrust. This nonbeliever, this atheist made the mistake of turning to the elaborate religiosity of her compatriots. Now nothing is left of her or of their love, except for the memories Giacomo writes down in his diary in the hope that perhaps he can create a better ending to the story.
MY REVIEW: I wanted to read a foreign novel that was translated to English and this book sounded intriguing to me. It was interesting to a point and then the details seemed to overpower the interaction between the characters and there were long portions where there was no interaction between the characters. The story did include prejudice against the main female character simply because she was Iranian. She did nothing to deserve the prejudice except her physical appearance as she dressed English at that time. The hatred and animosity eventually drove her to leave her husband and begin to live and dress as an Iranian female. Giacomo was in prison from the very beginning of the book for supposedly killing her. I wanted to resolve the question of whether in fact he had killed her. That issue was never resolved for me in his journal and description of the photographs he had in his possession while in his prison cell. The book left me confused and irritated due to this fact. I do not recommend this book. It was well-written and for that reason I rate it 3 Stars, but I did not like the book.
I received a free pdf version of this book from netgalley in exchange for my honest review.
Meet the Author:
A lecturer at the University of Turin and the author of several reviews, Alessandro Perissonotto made his fiction debut in 1997 with the detective story, L'anno che ucicisero Rosetta (Sellerio), which was followed by La canzone di Colombano and Treno 8017 (Sellerio, 2000 and 2003). In 2004 he published an epistolary noir with Rizzoli entitled, Al mio giudice (Winner of the Grinzane Cavour Prize in 2005 for Best Italian Fiction), followed in 2006 by Una piccola storia ignobile (Rizzoli), a series on the psychologist Anna Pavesi,who returns in L'ultima notte biana and L'ultima notte bianca and L'orchestra del Titanic. In 2008 he released La societa dell'indagine (Bompiani), followed by Per vendetta (2009). His works have been published in several European countries and in Japan. He is a contributor to La Stampa in Turin and IlMattino in Naples.
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