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Zusatztext “[A] potent debut . . . genuinely! even nakedly! touching.” – The New York Times “Testifies to the pleasures of the examined life. . . . Shows us how simply a life is made! minute by minute! scene by scene.” – Los Angeles Times “Enchantments looks back at the fairy-tale world that its narrator lived in . . . and celebrates the bittersweet wonder of having grown up in her own family. . . . Ferri handles the subject sure-handedly and gracefully.” – The Washington Post Informationen zum Autor Linda Ferri coauthored with Nanni Moretti the screenplay The Son’s Room , which won the Palme d’Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival and was released by Miramax in 2002. She lives in Italy. Klappentext 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 late-night ice cream runs. There are neighbors, friends, and eventually, boys. For the time being, suffering means tickle torture, a lost turtle, or a bossy friend. But, as she grows, the world around her begins to sharpen. Shadows appear and doubts begin to creep. And finally, the dangers of the adult world come into full view, first with the Paris riots of May, 1968, and then when tragedy strikes much closer to home. Refreshingly joyful, full of the things that children do, Enchantments is also something much more profound: an exploration of the lasting significance of the impressions of our youth. Leseprobe Tearing Apart Here comes the cradle covered with white muslin sailing into my room. There’s a moment of hesitation, and then the anchor is dropped in the very center so that the little world that was mine now revolves around this newborn sun. When my sister arrived, there were already three of us—my two brothers, aged seven and nine, and I, who was two. Of the prehistory before she was there I have no mental image; it is before daybreak, everything completely dark. The next thing I see is my sister in the cradle and a chair next to it on which I’m kneeling, my elbows across the back. I stay there for a bit watching her tiny translucent hands wave in the air. Then I get down and go off to play by myself, waiting for her to grow up. Not long after that I see an upheaval in our house and a parade of furniture, trunks, and suitcases going down the stairs. Even my little bed is gone, and I’m left alone in the room beside the howling cradle, which is afraid of being alone. There is a frightening emptiness, and the howling cradle resounds in it. I cover my ears and cry. We are moving to France, to Paris, in Caroline, our fifties Plymouth with gold fins. It’s crammed full with our baggage. My father is driving, my older brother beside him. In the backseat there are me, my brother Pietro, and my mother with Clara in her arms. Our new place was on the ground floor and so dark that my mother dressed my sister and me in bright colors so she could keep an eye on us. Later on, when we’d grown some, she started dressing us in darker colors, but exactly alike. As we stood in line in the front hall of the nursery school, Clara, expecting that we’d go into the classroom together, kept holding my hand. She cried if Bernadette, the teacher, tried to separate us to do different activities. Bernadette nicknamed her my “little limpet” and arranged the benches in two circles, one for the littler girls and the other for the bigger ones. The circles just kissed each other, and that was where Clara and I sat. When I turned five, they decided to move me to first grade. It’s evening. As usual at every serious moment my mother is sitting on her bed and I’m standing in front of her, our knees touching, my hands in hers. She explains to me that tomorrow I’m going to a new class but that ...
