Lies and Sorcery in NYRB Classics

Dec 16, 2023 Kevin Adams rated it it was amazing

I forgot to include this months ago. One of my favorite reads of the year. And the first (of many) books by Elsa Morante I’ll read.

26 likes · Like · see review

Jun 12, 2024 Kimi Tallant rated it liked it

I’ve now read a bunch of books in this “sprawling 19th/20th century family melodrama” genre and this one has all the pieces of the greats but just didn’t hit. The characters were all deeply unlikeable which is usually a plus but they were also deeply boring, even their attempts at being unlikeable little worms was boring. A rare NYRB I didn’t really enjoy.

5 likes · Like · see review

Nov 17, 2023 Tom rated it it was amazing

Originally published in 1948 and now finally available in English in complete form—in a superb translation by Jenny McPhee—Elsa Morante’s debut novel, Lies and Sorcery, is told by a young woman named Elisa, a reclusive but highly imaginative narrator who serves as her parents’ biographer. The premise of Elisa’s story is that everyone lives some type of lie, and neither her deceased parents nor her caretaker (the woman who takes Elisa in after her parents’ death) or her friends were any different Originally published in 1948 and now finally available in English in complete form—in a superb translation by Jenny McPhee—Elsa Morante’s debut novel, Lies and Sorcery, is told by a young woman named Elisa, a reclusive but highly imaginative narrator who serves as her parents’ biographer. The premise of Elisa’s story is that everyone lives some type of lie, and neither her deceased parents nor her caretaker (the woman who takes Elisa in after her parents’ death) or her friends were any different. Unlike actual people, however, her fantasies never betray her—and in that regard, she is very much like the other women in her life.

Elisa begins her family saga with her grandmother, Cesira, who marries a man twice her age, Teodoro Massia, the disowned, wayward scion of a wealthy family who pissed away all his money on travel, drinking, and women. When the prim and proper Cesira realizes her matrimonial mistake—with no one to guide or look out for her—she is furious and disappointed. While Cesira’s daughter, Anna (Elisa’s mother), is adored by Teodoro, Cesira sees her daughter as yet another burden to endure. Raising Anna in poverty, Teodoro regales his daughter with tales of his former trips abroad, and she cultivates a yearning to travel herself.

Teodoro’s sister, Concetta, who remained in good graces with her family and married well, is a countess whose husband died prematurely but not before their conceived a son, Edoardo Cerentano, a spoiled, manipulative and dissolute fop allowed to get away with anything he wants to, and deeply insecure and resentful because of that indulgence. Early in Anna’s life she meets Edoardo and falls in love with him, a love wholly unrealistic since it is in part aspirational on Anna’s part: The hope that her wealthy cousin will marry her and relieve her of the destitute life her father’s irresponsible decisions condemned her and her mother to. No amount of debasement and manipulation of her on Edoardo’s part will free her of that delusion.

Enter Nicola Monaco, an accountant for the Cerentano family, whose management of their financial affairs only increases after the death of Concetta’s husband. Part of his duties include collecting various fees from families that tend land owned by the Cerentano family, including the honest and hard-working Damiano De Salvi and his young wife Alessandra. Like Teodoro Massia, Nicola Monaco is a teller of tall tales and a philanderer. He ends up seducing Alessandra, who eventually gives birth to his son, Francesco. Francesco is a bright, precocious boy, the smartest child in a remote, rural community, and is dandled by Nicola on his rare visits to Damiano and Alessandra. Alessandra harbors hopes of greatness for her son, whom she hopes is worthy of Nicola’s attention and presumed fortune. However, Nicola is caught embezzling money from the Cerentano family and ceases visiting Alessandra and Francesco. Alessandra and Damiano, who know nothing of this, spend all of what little money they have on Francesco’s education, and Francesco does well enough in school to go to college in Sicily.

Once in Sicily, Francesco—the smartest kid in his Podunk town, utterly full of himself, and affecting a title of “baron”—Francesco hopes to track down Nicola for money to attend college. Nicola is dead by this point, but he does manage to meet Edoardo. Edoardo in turn introduces him to Anna, whom he is trying to dump, and Francesco of course falls madly in love with her.

But as Elisa tells us at the novel’s onset, she is not a reliable narrator. Inventing tales is a talent she honed to deal with her own isolation amid her parents’ emotional upheavals and mutual antipathy. Given that she was only 10 when her parents died, and that her caretaker, Rosaria, is not family, Elisa has no way of knowing her parents’ history. As plausible as it is, the novel is therefore a history invented from what she could plausibly surmise from her grandmother, Cesira, her parents’ behavior, and what she could guess of her father’s relationship to Rosaria.

A couple of themes emerge during the telling of this near 800-page story: Mothers’ antipathy towards their daughters and mothers’ adoration of their sons, both with disastrous consequences for the daughters and sons. Anna, Elisa’s mother, is addled and living in a willfully sustained hatred of the world because Edoardo dumps her after a year or so of mercilessly manipulating her and endlessly lying to her about his affections for her. She never overcomes her heartbreak, never once shows any interest in overcoming her heartache, and instead chooses to live in a delusion in which he would one day return to her. Meanwhile, utterly impoverished, she agrees to Franscesco’s marriage proposal so that she and her mother, Cesira, can eat and have a place to live. (She sees herself as too grand to ever work and would rather die before ever doing so. She lives the remainder of her life barely surviving, even when married to a man who works endless days, six days a week.)

Elsa Morante—and through her, Jenny McPhee—develop a pair of protagonists, Anna and Francesco, who begin as lively spirits that are slowly ground down to abject bitterness as their dreams—some more realistic than others—are reduced to ashes, their impoverishment only worsened, while they cling to hopes with no basis in reality. Only the courtesan Rosaria, the giddy, flighty, and idiotic lover of Francesco, is possessed of a life-affirming version of constancy, as corrupt as that word may be given the life she leads. The characters are as endearing as they are maddening.

I generally stay out of the prediction business, but Jenny McPhee’s utterly compelling rendition of Lies and Sorcery seems certain of being nominated for—and winning—any number of translation awards next year, a masterpiece of the art of translation.

For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
...more

2 likes · Like · see review