Ua mother who has premonitory dreams, a holy grandfather from whose tomb oil dripsan aunt married to a priest and a prodigy that passes through the women of the family, a miraculous attitude that gives abundance, but can disappear at any moment. For unbearable pain, for example. Maria Costanza Boldrini in the novel The years of abundance intertwines the story of a humble Italian family with the great events of the twentieth century and an extraordinary gift that immerses the story in an aura of magical realism.
The years of abundance by Maria Costanza Boldrini
The writing, dense and fluid, flows like an impetuous river and holds together the pangs of hunger of a very poor Italy, the tragic events of the two wars and the love that all the members of the Contini family have for each other . In addition to “abundance”, Beata, Clarice, Antonia’s gift for producing enormous quantities of cigars, embroidery, medicines, in an atmosphere of a South American novel.
Have you read many South American books?
Many, I moved on to adult literature through the novels of Marquez, Borges, Amado, Allende. At 11 I was a bit “stranded”, as they say in my area, with a great love, Harry Potter. My mother, exasperated, put One Hundred Years of Solitude in my hand and that’s when my life changed, I never stopped. I give them gratitude for having opened up a world to me.
Maria Costanza Boldrini was born in the Marche and lives in France where she works as a freelance translator and editor for Una Word a Day, a linguistic and etymological study site.
Some critics accused her of having written a ’70s book. For magical realism inspiration?
Partly, but also for the style. I’m not a great writer of dialogues, even and above all as a reader I’m fascinated by the story for the story’s sake. I suffer a bit from the redundancy of dialogue in novels, if I wanted to deal with a screenplay I would go to the theater or the cinema. Well, my absence from dialogue has been interpreted as a link to the 70s style.
The story is set in the Ancona area, his land of origin: are we talking about what we know?
Unless an author invents everything from the beginning, like that sacred monster Tolkien did, who even invented a language, I think it’s a fair rule of writing. I was born in Chiaravalle, the places I talk about, changing the names a little, belong to me.
So is the story of the cigar makers, Beata’s profession, inspired by reality?
My great-great-grandmother was one of them, at the Chiaravalle tobacco factory.
They were particular women, among them we can hear the first stirrings of female emancipation.
With all the contradictions of the case. In fact, we are calling emancipation a situation in which the woman works in the factory 10 hours a day, comes home, there are children, often also the field to work… And many husbands at the tavern. I don’t know if it’s true emancipation, but they were workers and work has always been able to give people freedom of action.
The years of abundance by Maria Costanza Boldrini, and. North384 pages, €19
They take part in the first strikes, there is talk of socialism…
The Ancona area is historically republican, there was also a beautiful anarchist enclave. Very politically active environments, especially with regards to the demands of the working class.
And this is the most historiographical part. Then there is the extraordinary: Beata rolls cigars at astonishing speed, her daughter Clarice sews like fairies, Antonia will have to deal with leaving this world in peace… All magical women, including a divinatory aunt who casts horoscopes.
That is an invented character, I had a lot of fun sketching him. The others are all inspired by my family, I respected their professions and personal stories but, there is definitely no magical fluid among my ancestors!
What is the true magic of women? Is it a part of the mystery that has been lost?
No, she didn’t get lost. Our magic, universally recognized, is that of bringing life. And even our secrecy has something magical about it. Most literary works were written by men, women took up the pen late. Men are not used to reading us, we are: the magic of women is also this understanding that we have of them, little or nothing reciprocated. But it would be nice if they understood us more.
However, all the husbands described in the novel “read” their partners well, love them and support them.
I hope there are more and more husbands like the ones I described, they were like that in my family, I haven’t added anything. The magic of women is also in this: after all these centuries of oppression and patriarchy we have not lost hope, indeed we are more combative than ever. We will always try to make men read us.
He punctuates the story with obsolete, beautiful and little-known words, such as cinigia, cruore, (ash with some sparks, flowing blood…). What is the magic of words?
Words don’t describe reality, they create it. An example? God said: Let there be light and there was light. So words were enough for God to create the universe…
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