The ANNOTICO Report

Boston Globe
By Antony Shugaar  |
June 12, 2005

The Almond Picker
By Simonetta Agnello Hornby
Translated, from the Italian, by Alastair McEwen
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 314 pp., $23

Most countries have their south, and the relationship with the rest of the
country is often fraught (idiosyncratic old England, of course, has its
south in the north; the relationship is equally fraught). Italy's south is
Sicily, a place where the past, as the man said, is not only not dead, it's
not even past.

If Sicily is a land with long experience of invasion, accustomed to turning
relationships of power on their head, it is also a land of subtlety,
intelligence, and pride. The term ''sicilitudine" is used in Italian much
as ''negritude" is used in French and English, to describe a long struggle
to establish a sense of identity and dignity.

In ''The Almond Picker," a serving woman of humble origin turns the tables
with cunning and determination and, in suitably Sicilian Gothic fashion,
does so, adroitly and with cold determination, from beyond the grave. But
the Gothic here is, if anything, Greek, and Moorish, and Mafia-ridden.

To reveal the details of how Maria Rosalia Inzerillo -- known as la
Mennulara, a nickname that means ''almond picker" -- shows who wears the
ectoplasmic pants in the family would mean undermining the novel's
structure of suspense, though to be fair, only a fairly sleepy reader could
fail to see the various plot devices coming from chapters away.

What is subtle, unnerving, and ultimately rewarding about the book is its
central plot device: an epistolary chess match between the living and the
dead. At each crucial strategic turning point, the living come a little
closer to losing the match by following their own tragically wrong-headed
instincts. And at each point, the dead woman has a new move awaiting them.
The beauty of this progression is that with each maneuver, we gain a new
appreciation for the almond picker's depth and acuity, and a deeper,
appalled understanding of the inanity of the minds and lives of the
Alfallipe family, her employers and masters on this side of the grave, but
her helpless victims now.

The Alfallipes blame Mennulara for each of their foolish moves, but it
becomes clear at the end that the dead woman is actually offering help,
even salvation, to the Alfallipes. She had borne the brunt of their ill
will during her life, and now, having done her best to help them from
beyond the grave, she is again spurned. Her rejection qualifies her for a
strange Christ-like symbolism, and yet the domestic setting and the clear
class divisions made me think, oddly, of Kipling's ''Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," a
story about a pet mongoose, a family favorite, the protector of the
children's safety but also something less than human: in other words, a
Sicilian peasant.

Each step in the process, moreover, echoes through the small inland
mountain town of Roccacolomba, filtering through the complex and changing
social structures of Sicilian society in the early 1960s. There is the
Communist postal clerk, the local Mafia chieftain, the parish priest, the
town doctor, and cousins, nephews, and relatives of every degree. It is
rich, it is dark, and it is bitter.

And yet I came away from this book with a sense of disappointment.
Simonetta Agnello Hornby's novel is touted as a bestseller in Italy, the
winner of four international literary awards. And even here in America
best-selling, award-winning books deal heavily in feel-good clichés,
obvious turns of irony, edifying tales of triumphant underdogs, as does
''The Almond Picker." Part of this book's appeal in its original Italian is
the strong Sicilian flavor of the setting, the language, and the dialogue.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to translate those nuances, flavors,
and accents, but I was also surprised at how poorly the translated English
reads.

The translator, Alastair McEwen, is British, and Americans and Brits are,
of course, two peoples divided by a common language. But I don't think that
explains the text's peculiar flatness.

At a crucial moment, early in the book, the doctor hands over to the family
a sealed envelope entrusted to him by the dying woman. One of the daughters
says: ''It'll be the will." A great deal is riding on this document, and
the response is clearly one of urgent interest, and yet, instead of ''That
must be the will!" or ''Maybe that's her will!" or ''Could it be the will?"
the translator has chosen an odd, offhand diction. Which perfectly mirrors
the original Italian structure. When someone comments that the family has
''organized the funeral" instead of ''making funeral arrangements," again,
the Italian seems to be dictating the translator's words, as is also the
case when a character asks ''May I offer you something?" when what he meant
was ''Can I buy you a drink?" Throughout, this flatness undercut my
enjoyment of the book.

But this remains a story of grim determination and canny intelligence
reaching back from the grave to offer a fatuous, inheritance-crazed family
a series of choices between doing the right thing and receiving a good hard
slap in the face. And nothing spares them the face slappings they so richly
deserve. No amount of uninspired translating can undercut that kind of
enjoyment.

Antony Shugaar is the translator, most recently, of two books by Carlo
Levi, ''Fleeting Rome" (Wiley) and ''Words Are Stones" (Hesperus).

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/
articles/2005/06/12/a_woman_who_
was_both_servant_and_master?mode=PF