Set in Italy and beginning in the first half of the twentieth century, this story revolves around the narrator tracing the life of her family, principally her grandmothers and mostly her paternal grandmother. A poetic, passionate and lonesome woman, the narrator's paternal grandmother is considered mad by her village for her passions and the ways she expresses them through words, and she goes for years unmarried because of this. Finally, she's married to a widower that momentarily lives with her family and then couple moves to the city of Cagliari. But even though the marriage is a respectful one and suits both partners, it is still lacking in the ardour she longs for. It is until she leaves for kidney stone treatment in Civitavecchia where she meets a disabled World War two veteran that she finds the passion she's long desired.

The writer's managed to do so much with such few pages, the possibilities she offers almost as the story ends and the ending itself was incredibly done. ( )

Beautifully written story focusing on the years after WWII, of an Italian woman on the island of Sardinia. The story is pieced together by the woman's granddaughter (both are nameless) from things she has been told by her grandmother and by her found journal and a letter after her death. Grandmother was "rescued" from old maidom by a refugee during the war, though she did not love him. Beautiful and voluptuous and ahead of her time in terms of independent thought and a romantic disposition for poetry and love, "the principle thing" Grandmother is a local misfit, though she makes due in her marriage. She is also unable to have a child due to kidney stones, so she goes to the mainland in 195o to a hot springs spa for treatment. There she meets the Veteran, a war hero, who has lost a leg and who shares her love of all things romantic. They become involved and Grandmother finally feels the completion of all her longings and desires. 9 months after she returns home, she gives birth to a son (father to the narrator). A simple tale in terms of action, but complex in terms of emotional involvement, family dynamics and mores of the time. Translates well from the original Italian and the wistfulness can be summed up by the epigraph: "If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack." ( )

Une évasion, parfaite pour les vacances sans pour autant être banale. ( )

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1639916677 ( )

Avevo desiderato tanto leggerlo, poi non me ne avevano parlato bene e invece, nonostante sia meno coinvolgente di mentre dorme il pescecane, in cui la caratterizzazione dei personaggi è troppo accentuata, l'ho trovato ben scritto e interessante, finalmente non un noir sardo, un bel romanzo, interessante è l'aggettivo. ( )

A short easy read, with an interesting conceit: the narrator explores the personal histories of her parents and grandparents, each story leading by topic rather than chronology on to the next. I do want to read more books using this organisational technique: it fascinates me and I want to figure out how to make it work myself. Unfortunately the stories, or story, itself was a bit slight even for this short text and ultimately forgettable, although there were some enjoyable twists along the way. ( )

From the Land of the Moon is a novella about a Sardinian woman searching for love in the post-war years amongst the metaphorical and literal ruins of her life. The woman recognizes that her nature is perhaps flawed as true love seems to remain elusive. Her quest assumes at times, sad, pitiable, desperate and creative forms that echo the pathos of Anna Karenina and Madam Bovary. The woman moves about the Italian landscapes of Cagliari and Milan as the country rebuilds from the effects of Allied Bombing and Nazi retreat. The settings of the story provide the physical architecture of the woman's efforts and parallels can be drawn between the reconstruction and her state of mind. The story is told from the point of view of the woman's granddaughter after the woman, referred to as Grandmother, has passed away, providing a doubly unreliable narrative: The woman herself may have been insane and her story suffers from being two generations away from being immediately verified. From the Land of the Moon is poignant without being maudlin and, the letter which serves as the final chapter is a powerful denouement.

Redacted from the original blog review at dog eared copy, From the Land of the Moon; 11/12/2012 ( )

Letto senza aspettative, non mi sono ricreduto.
Non ho inquadrato bene il punto di vista della narrazione, se dotata di vita propria e intramezzata da commenti della nipote, o se raccontata di seconda mano dalla stessa nipote protagonista..
Mi dispiace per la dolcezza che in alcune pagine mi ha effettivamente coinvolto, ma anche lo sfondo sardo, che negli autori isolani è spesso quasi il vero protagonista, qui risulta appiattito, spoglio, utilizzato come il solito fardello antico con cui bisogna lottare, proprio come i personaggi che in cento e più pagine non trovano una vera forma. ( )

From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, is the story of a young unnamed woman’s grandmother just at the end of WWII in Italy after the 1943 American bombing of Cagliari. Despite the namelessness of the main characters, there are named secondary characters in the slim novel that provide it depth and the main characters some roots. The granddaughter is telling the story of her grandmother after her death, reminiscing about the growth and change in family.

The life of this family has seem good times and bad times, with some members experiencing greater hardships than others. The grandmother in particular has a number of suitors that fail to come back after several weeks due to rumors about her sanity. Her own family keeps her at arms length and often hidden from public view unless necessary. She’s the black sheep of the family, though from what we learn about her she has normal urges of a young woman and a desire for freedom. More than that, she’s got a creative mind and a penchant for writing.

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2012/10/from-the-land-of-the-moon-by-milena-agus-tra... ( )

“But she would discuss it with God, before she went to Hell. She would point out to him that if he creates a person in a certain way then he can’t expect her to act as if she were not her.”

In this tiny slender skerrick of a novella (108 pages), the narrator’s eccentric grandmother is lovingly remembered. The title comes from the phrase used in Sardinia to describe someone who seems not to be entirely in their right mind. In an unusual take on the unreliable narrator construct, we have only the granddaughter’s recollection of her grandmother’s stories – and if the grandmother was not entirely truthful (even unintentionally), that skews the narrative.

It’s hard to classify this novella – it’s not heavily plot driven (very little actually happens) and the characters (apart from the grandmother) are never described much because we just have a narrative of their actions, not very much actual character description. I suppose it is a still life, in novella form. A bittersweet tale of wartime romance and old Sardinian life.

That is not to say that the novella is totally without events or key themes: the temporary romance is a sweet one and gently told; the longer arc of the grandmother’s marriage a more bitter-sweet one. I never quite got to grips with the grandfather’s character – he always seemed quite harsh and unloving – both towards his wife and his child. The grandmother is very interesting – I felt she wasn’t so much mad as just delighted in shocking people and wanted to be taken seriously, not imprisoned in backward customs.

Caution: contains very graphic adult content – which seems to spring out of nowhere! The book seems so slender and innocent and is lyrically written, and then suddenly there’s a page of… well, such content as is distinctly unsuitable for those with relatively conservative sensibilities! I was quite embarrassed to be reading this on the Tube a number of times for fear my neighbour was reading too and judged me! ( )

This is a story of unrequited love, of a woman forced to marry a man she liked but did not love. In the wake of World War II the protagonist finds herself at a health spa, hoping to cure her infertility. There she meets a war veteran and falls deeply in love. This love is transitory, however, and the woman returns to her native Sardinia and her loveless marriage. While the woman becomes pregnant, she continues to pine for the veteran. The woman's son grows up to become a talented pianist, but it is never entirely clear who his father is.

The book is narrated by the woman's granddaughter. Why this is necessary is not evident until the very end of the book. The end brings a significant plot twist, and that caused me to rethink the whole book.

This is a short book, and provides an interesting look at life in postwar Sardinia. Agus has certainly captured the sadness of those who resign themselves to circumstance. ( )

A book about the madness of love (for which I'd give it four stars) turns out instead to be a(nother) self-reflexive book about writing. ( )

A really sweet little novel. It will warrant re-reading. ( )

It's that old wrestling match between Duty and Passion, where the primary protagonist is a wildly romantic grandmother. She's one crazy wrestler. ( )

“She had married late, in June of 1943, after the American bombing of Cagliari, and in those days to be thirty and not yet settled was already to be something of an old maid. Not that she was ugly, or lacked suitors—on the contrary. But at a certain point the wooers called less frequently and then stopped, each time before they had officially asked my great-grandfather for her hand. Dear signorina, circumstances beyond my control prevent me from calling on you this Wednesday, and also next, which would be very enjoyable for me but, unfortunately, impossible. So grandmother waited for the third Wednesday, but a little girl, a pipiedda, always arrived with the letter that put off the visit again, and then there was nothing.”

This tiny little book of just 108 pages packs the rich history of the narrator's grandmother, who, growing up in a small Sardinian village and considered to be crazy, was the shame of her parents and sisters. When a man, very recently widowed by the aforementioned bombing offers to marry the inconvenient girl, her father accepts the proposal although she begs him to refuse; she does not love the man and neither does he love her, but marry they do, to everyone's relief. But nearly ten years later, the woman has had one miscarriage after another, even though she has made sure to meet her husband's every sexual demand, no matter how peculiar, to keep him away from the brothels, so she is sent off to be cured of kidney stones at a thermal bath station. There, she meets another patient, a war veteran, and for the very first time, experiences with him the love, passion and consideration she has always yearned for.

It's difficult for me to put into words why it is I fell in love with this little book. It's a story about ordinary people trying their best to get on with life and make do with what they have, while going to great lengths to fulfill their yearning and passion, in ways that some would call madness and others would consider to be artistic genius. Gorgeous. A must read. ( )

From the Land of the Moon is a beautifully written ode to love. Love in all its manifestations: infatuation, lust, married conviviality, familial caring, patriotism, even an all-consuming passion for music. And it’s a story about the consequences of love’s absence, the desperate desire to fill the void with something: sex, kindness, even a lonely sort of madness.

And she stayed at his pace, her beautiful fur-lined shoes in step with those ugly ones of grandfather’s, because she wasn’t angry with him—on the contrary, she was so sorry she didn’t love him. She was so sorry, and it pained her, and she wondered why God, when it comes to love, which is the principal thing, organizes things in such a ridiculous way: where you can do every possible and imaginable kindness, and there’s no way to make it happen, and you might even be mean, as she was now, not even lending him her scarf, and yet he followed her through the snow, half frozen, missing the chance, lover of food that he was, to eat the local potato ravioli and porchetto on the spit. During the trip home she was so sorry that in the darkness of the bus she leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed, as if to say “Ah well.”

Grandmother, the only name by which we know the main character, has suffered greatly for love and lack of love. Her parents beat her for failing to catch a husband, her eventual husband loves only the perverse sexual pleasure she can give him, and the one true love of her life is an elusive, ephemeral encounter that lingers unseen in her mind. She worries that there is something about her that causes love to flee, even as she stretches her hands for it. Her granddaughter thinks that perhaps there is a reason:

If at night we sleep without nightmares, if papa and mamma’s marriage has always been free of bumps, if I’m getting married to my first boyfriend, if we don’t have panic attacks and don’t try to kill ourselves, or throw ourselves into garbage bins, or slash ourselves, it’s thanks to grandmother, who paid for everyone. In every family there’s someone who pays the tribute, so that the balance between order and disorder is maintained and the world doesn’t come to a halt.

Milena Agus is a wonderful writer capable of capturing the longing for love that is fundamental to human relationships and turning it into a delicately woven story reminiscent of a folk tale. I would never have guessed that this was a first novel, and I fervently hope it is not her last. ( )

"She had to begin to live. Because the Veteran was a moment and grandmother's life was many other things."

Thought to be insane by her family, the grandmother in this story attempts to recreate a sane and normal life to prove them wrong. Her reputation and behavior dissuades suitors from pursuing her, and without marriage, life in a small Italian village circa WWII leaves her a social outcast. Shortly before the war ends, however, she meets a widower who agrees to marry her; it appears to most that he did so only out of duty to her family for their supporting him financially. Their marriage is marked by tolerable distance and quietness, and while she wishes for children, health issues prevent her from carrying a child full-term.

Eventually her husband sends her to a health spa on the sea, in the hopes she'll heal and recover. Perhaps she does so, but too well. For there she meets a man she refers to only as the "Veteran", one who loves her unconditionally and who finds her far more fascinating and vibrant than any 'normal' woman. He thinks she's beautiful, intelligent, and witty. Finally she is loved for who she is...until it's time for her to return home.

She returns home with new vigor and soon discovers she's pregnant. Her husband is thrilled and their marriage appears to thrive amid the love for their new son. But who is the Veteran? Will she see him again? Why did she return if she was so loved?

Milena Agus frames the story as a narrative between the grandmother and her granddaughter, both unnamed, and flashes back and forth through different parts of their family history. The grandmother is a complex character: a woman who will secretly work like a slave to acquire a piano for her musical son, but who is unable to bear hearing him play it. As the granddaughter hears her story, she has to evaluate how much of it is true, and begins to question what role the Veteran ultimately had. More and more questions appear, but Agus keeps the story tight and keeps revealing details right until the end that ultimately turn the story upside down. Nothing can be taken at face value, and while the grandmother is possibly an unreliable narrator, maybe the granddaughter is too.

The story is fast-paced and hard to predict, and surprises are sprinkled throughout. Images of the grandmother searching Milan, looking for the Veteran around every corner, are detailed so intricately one can practically feel the fog that obscures the city and her motives. Italy plays a supporting role as the sun and the sea seem to brighten the background of simple village life even during wartime. If anything, the story is almost too quick. More questions could have been answered or expanded upon. Yet in all, a satisfying glimpse of human perception and frailties. ( )

In this debut novel by Milena Agus, a young unnamed Italian women pieces together the story of her grandmother’s life, a tale that spans three generations and two families. Translated from Italian, this beautiful book retains it’s lyrical prose. The passion of her grandmother’s bittersweet life and the picturesque descriptions of Italy flowed from the pages.

The story begins begins in Sardinia, near the end World War II. Grandmother had just married at age 30 and was considered a bit of an old maid. Her father had forced her to marry the first man who asked, an older widower who she diden’t love. Her family was convinced she scared away all the other suitors by writing them love poems and her own mother thought she was a little bit crazy, perhaps from the land of the moon.

After 10 years of marriage and several miscarriages grandmother still had no children. Kidney stones were blamed and for a cure she was sent to the thermal baths on the mainland. It was there that she met the Veteran and immediately fell in love with him. Nine months later she gave birth to a son and the spa treatment was considered a success. She never tells anyone about the Veteran but longs for her lost love all her life.

There was always more to grandmother’s life than our narrator knew. After her death the granddaughter finds a book and a letter that had been hidden away. While some questions are now answered, others are raised that made me wonder about what was real and what was imagined. I’m being vague because I don’t want to spoil this for anyone who decides to read the book. I will say that the ending was very haunting and powerful and that families will go to many lengths to protect their secrets.

At a little over 100 pages this a novella rather than a novel and when I finished it I wanted more. After I had time to fully digest the story and think about it for a few days, I decided that it was the right length even though some of the questions are not fully answered. And that is my point; I was still thinking about it a few days later and wondering. Highly recommended. ( )

This review was first published in Belletrista.

Every once in a while you come across a small gem of a novel, a novella really, that just captivates you: Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier comes to mind or Chingiz Aïtmatov's Jamilia. They draw you in, mesmerize you a little and, before you realize it, you're on the last page. Milena Agus' From the Land of the Moon is just such a book. This short novel won the 2008 Zerilli-Marimò Prize, and was translated into English in 2010.

The narrator of the story, a young Sardinian woman, reflects upon the people who raised her. She tells us of her father, her mother, her mother's mother but, most of all, she talks about her paternal grandmother, someone described by a lover as "a creature made at a moment when God simply had no wish for the usual mass-produced women and, being in a poetic vein, had created her." There is a sense of intimacy in the story. We never learn the narrator's name and she, in turn, names very few individuals. Everything is "Mamma told me…" or "Papa never had…" It's as if she's talking directly to you, a friend or acquaintance, expecting you to know who the people in her family are, and drawing you into the stories and their lives.

The grandmother's life emerges in pieces, some of it from stories told by the narrator's parents and some from diaries she found, with frequent stops to go back and fill in a section of history here or there. We see her as a young woman tearing though life in a destructive storm, trying to create passion where little exists. Her striking looks bring many first date suitors but few second dates because she sends the men ardent poems that shock them. Harming herself causes her family to contemplate confining her for protection. Even when marriage finally does come, it is arranged and forced upon her by her parents as an alternative to an asylum.

After her marriage, she takes a short trip to a health spa. There she has a wonderful affair, and the tempestuous, troubled woman is changed. As the narrator says, "I knew a different grandmother, who could laugh at a trifle, and my father said the same...maybe those other things were only stories." But she, the narrator, doesn't really believe that. Rather, she is certain that the passion engendered by that short affair transformed her grandmother's life, making her happy and whole. Much later, when the book ends, we understand how that instance of redemption has become mythic to the narrator, and why she is telling the story.

If this had been the sum total of the book, it would have been a pleasant love story that could have turned sentimental, or even maudlin, at any moment, but didn't. I would have enjoyed Agus' comfortable and inviting style of writing, but I'm not sure that my experience of reading the novel would have gone much beyond casual enjoyment.

However, the story didn't simply end there. As the narrator continued, her tale took little twists and turns. The story I thought had been so clearly set forth would be rewritten slightly along the way. Rather than being unpleasant, this "imperfect" narration gave the story a small sense of folklore, that ambiguous feeling that what we thought we knew may not, in fact, be exactly true. It was an extra dimension that made this book work so well for me. For a short while, I was pulled inside someone else's life, not quite aware of what was going on around me and, when I came to, found myself thinking, "I wonder if…." ( )

http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2010/12/review-from-land-of-moon-by-milena-agus... ( )

L'autrice racconta la storia di una nonna (nonna della narratrice), della sua vita, del suo matrimonio e dei suoi amori. In quest'ordine, appunto, perché alla nonna tutto capita un po' in ritardo, quando ormai non ci spera più. Il matrimonio sembrava una possibilità sfumata (per via di una sentimentalità troppo accesa che faceva fuggire i pretendenti), quando a Cagliari, nel '43, arriva un uomo che viene ospitato dalla famiglia e si sdebita sposandone la figlia. Ma non è ancora l'amore, quell'amore vagheggiato e sognato da tutti i personaggi di Milena Agus, con tanto sfortunato ardore. Ed ecco che sembra arrivare inaspettato, durante un viaggio in Continente, durante una cura termale per curare il "mal di pietre", i calcoli renali. ( )