Enchantments

By Linda Ferri

Book Overview

The narrator of Linda Ferri's charismatic debut is a fortunate daughter, growing up with her family in Italy and France, leading a life of wonder and plenty. There is horseback riding. There are... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400040698
• ISBN13: 9781400040698
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Knopf
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 0.7" x 4.6"

Customer Reviews

Enchanting

Take a story written as a memoir and make it from the view of a nameless eight-year-old child. Now make the author Italian, so now her book has to be translated, by a man none the less. Go on to make the young girl spoiled rotten and ego centered. How, oh how can such a book hold anybody's interest? Well, if the writing is superb, the translation true, the story touching and interesting as all get out, one just might pull it off. Yes, at times we don't like our little girl narrator, but she holds our interests, that's for sure. She is the daughter of a wealthy and privileged Italian family, who live most of the year in Paris, spending summers at their Italian villa. She has two older brothers who taunt her and a younger sister who adores her. She takes and fails at ballet lessons, she behaves as if she is better than the French children. When she causally mentions to her father that she'd like a horse, he buys her several. She blithly leaves her sister crying in class when she is moved up a grade without caring about the younger girl's fear or feelings. Life revolves around our little memoir writer and she carries on as if that is the true and correct way of the world. However, Ms. Ferri gradually draws us into our little writer's life, making us care more than we'd ever thought possible. This girl has feelings herself, hopes and fears too, and by the time you finish this short little book, I can promise that you'll have had a laugh or two, shed a tear or two, maybe more, because the ending is tragic and is truly touching. And as a side benefit you'll learn a bit about Paris in the sixties as you page through this tender novel and I'll just bet, that like me, you'll wish it had been a little longer.

A Stunning Debut from a Gifted Author

Enchantments, originally published in Italy (1997) under the title Incantesimi, is Linda Ferri's debut novel. Told in a series of 25 short vignettes, it is narrated by an unnamed Italian girl in the style of a memoir, from the toddler to early teen years. The narrator and her family move from Italy to Paris during the opening scene of this small novel. What follows is an intimate tale of a family whose dynamics are illuminated through summers in Italy, a visit to America and winters in Paris. Making a cohesive whole out of such a small book is a challenge for any author, but to carry it out in a debut novel and have it result in such a strong voice is a trademark of a gifted new author. Everything about this book is intimate, from the size of the book (measuring only 7.4" x 4.7") to the length of each vignette to the fact that the narrator is never named, although the reader learns the names of all her family members. Ferri captures the dreamy sense of wonder that permeates a child's life. She uses language to tantalize the reader, drawing one into the world she has created. "...so the fear dissolved, reduced to a bit of a mystery I carried in my pocket when I made a foray up to the attic or down to the cellar." Alone the words don't have much meaning, but the feeling they evoke is of being privy to a private world and language, one inhabited by a creative child who enjoys making words dance and play. The distinct chapter titles also add to the dream-like state engendered by this novella. Titles such as "the castrator," "perfidy" or "dame dame" add to the mystery, impelling the reader to journey with Ferri just a little longer until, suddenly, the narration ends and the reader is shaken rudely awake. Woven throughout the vignettes is the narrator's dynamic relationship with her father. She loves him, fears him, is embarrassed by him, and even though she is fond of him, she "would like him better if he were a woman." Here too, in describing these moments of tension, Ferri's masterful use of language is present. "...and I know the chain has snapped: he's not barking anymore, he's ready to bite." Seen through the eyes of a child, this novel provides masterful insight into a marriage created by two volatile personalities. Originally published in Italian, Linda Ferri did her own translation for the French edition. For this English edition she called upon John Casey, one of the pupils she tutored in Italian. Casey (whose first translation was Alessandro Boffa's You're such an Animal Viskovitz! - Knopf, 2002) is a gifted translator - he has maintained Ferri's distinctive voice and playfulness of language yet provided a work that flows as gracefully as if it was written in English. In her other life, Ferri writes screenplays and this has definitely influenced her stylistically. Her use of language in Enchantments has a cinegraphic quality, painting pictures in the mind of the long, hot summer days of childhood when the worst that could happen was s

Simplicity of Style Woven into the Wonders in a Child's Mind

ENCHANTMENTS is enchanting: Linda Ferri creates a touching novel out of fragments of a child's perception of the world in the throes of moving toward that fearsome state of adulthood. And part of the beauty of this 'first novel', INCANTESIMA translated from the Italian by John Casey, is the simple writing style Ferri assumes as she looks as the world from the vantage of a young schoolgirl. Told in brief chapters (about the same length of the attention span of her narrator who remains nameless), this is the story of an Italian family of comfortable means whose story begins with the birth of Clara, the baby sister of our narrator, who with her two older brothers lead a happy life with their mother and variably magical or monster father. From their time in their native Italy they soon move to Paris where the children must adapt to 'Frenchkids' and the new atmosphere of Parisian attitude - with the help of their daily nanny Dame Dame. Ferri literally strolls through childhood with these children and their friends and enemies, their moments of simple exaltation and the moments of humiliation. Step by step we are made to feel the enlarging view of the world as the children become ever more observant. There is a long boat trip to America where once again the terrain and ambience of a strange place are molded through a child's perception. Then once again the family returns to Paris and ultimately confronts the reality of the life cycle in a most touching way. Ferri is a wise writer and for those who have had the pleasure of seeing THE SON'S ROOM for which she wrote the screenplay, it should come as no surprise that hidden beneath the skin of each charming chapter is a suggestion of the influence of adult invasion: the life cycle is made a metaphor by the molding years of preadolescence, before the vagaries of sex and finiteness appear. The best way to describe the pleasures of reading this brief novel is within the title. This is a little book to cherish. Grady Harp, April 05

Insert standard pun here.

Linda Ferri, Enchantments (Knopf, 2005) Enchantments is a very small, quite lovely little novel that doesn't really seem to be about much of anything until you get to the very end. Thus, it's impossible to tell you what the book is about without ruining it in some way. Just trust me, it really is about something. Kind of. Enchantments is an impressionist treat, twenty-five small still-lifes that together give us the coming of age of a privileged Italian girl. The girl herself is not all that likeable, when it comes right down to it; she's self-absorbed, mean, and uncommunicative in the extreme. But we're not here to admire the would-be heroine, we're here to admire the scenery. And what scenery it is. Ferri paints her scenes here with all the subtlety of the truly observant (which is what really gives this away as fiction, not memoir; the narrator couldn't possibly be observant enough to pick up all the lush detail to be found here) and all the mastery of the fictional painter who did a portrait for some guy named Dorian Gray. Everything is ripe, except for those parts that look as if they've already gone over the edge and slipped into decay. There are never enough decayed bits to overwhelm the painting; the flies haven't started buzzing yet, but you can always feel them quivering under the skin of whatever fruit you imagine when you think of the term "still life." It's the interplay between beauty and decay that truly charms the reader here, and charming it is. It's small, readable, and, well, enchanting. *** ½