Personal Effects

by Francesca Duranti

Would-be Italian journalist Valentina embarks on an odyssey through pre-glasnost Europe in search of Milos Jarco, Eastern Europe's most famous--and reclusive--author, in the hopes of gaining an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679411046
• ISBN13: 9780679411048
• Release Date: April 1993
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A perfect gem of a book

Francesca Duranti is a writer of such minimalist skill that she creates worlds and characters in roughly 150 pages. I am reminded that Tolstoy once marveled at how Mark Twain could tell such concise stories, and I think a lot of American writers who stretch stories to half a thousand pages while Duranti (and some others like Sarah Dunant and Penelope Lively) use a fraction of that could learn a lot by reading this book. The story is about what it means to have a personal identity, and what it means to lose it as the main character does when her ex-husband -- who had robbed her of both years and possessions -- comes back to remove the nameplate on her front door. This is not a "chick book," as this brief description may suggest, but a serious, beautifully written story about finding out who we are. Who any of us are. The book is written as an interior monologue, mostly talking to herself, but switching at times to imagined conversations with her mother or ex-husband. It is a very clever tactic but not one which makes the writing style dominate the content. I think she is an amazing writer. Perhaps one of the best of our times, and I will read anything she writes.