SEX, DRUGS AND EXCESSES. (The Pure Weight of the Heart - Antonella Gambotto)

Member Name: thingywhatsit

Product:	The Pure Weight of the Heart - Antonella Gambotto
Date:	06/09/06 (136 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A very individual and abrupt manner of writing.

Disadvantages: May not suit all.

I like reading authors I have never read before, ones whose work I am not familiar with and tempted by the cover of this book, with its' mystery and perhaps darkness, I took a plunge into a read I was not really prepared for. Antonella Gambotto is an extraordinarily complex writer, sometimes tripping over her own intellect, though for good reason. I shall try and explain.

We all have thought processes. We all think things that we would fail to put into words, and this lady not only put the words on the page, but made them work. The story is of Angelica, a child who loses her father at the age of 10. Her mother is somewhat of a drama queen, and whilst her loss is a real and tangible one, what she forgets in her efforts to escape the reality of her situation is that children need to grieve. Angelica and her brother, Amedeo, are practically ignored whilst their mother is so engulfed in her own pain and grief and the re-making of her life, that her childrens' needs are ignored. Angelica's fathers death was a violent one, and in an effort to make a new life, their mother uproots the children to Australia and a life of excessive compensatory though shallow romance, until she meets Aldo and marries him.

What I found so upsetting in the book was the way in which it is worded. It is purposeful and is written in first person, the narrator being Angelica herself. Seemingly detached from reality, as the story unfolds, the reader can actually feel why both Angelica and her brother escape into a reality of their own. In his case, drugs and excessive use of cocaine. In her case, the manner in which she describes the relationships with others is almost detached and retrospectively critical and analytical. When you take a child at this age away from everything that they know, deny them grief for their father, introduce them to a new husband who makes his rules very straight from the beginning and attempts to dominate to such a degree that the child is controlled, apathetic and almost playing life out as invisible and programmed, then you begin to see the sense in the abstract way that the book is written.

I know nothing of Gambotto, though through reading the book, can only assume that her understanding of human nature is such that she has relied upon an amazing intuition, or that part of Angelica's story belongs to her, as a person. As Angelica passes through teens, she marries an Englishman and the book is written as if looking back with a brutal honesty that perhaps lesser mortals may have brushed aside, opting to write in simple terms. Gambotto doesn't. Her writing is positively satirical in nature, and she can be forgiven the shocking descriptions of a lifetime passing where nothing means very much, though much happens.

She is an astronomer, and the caustic, almost razor cutting description written and stated in present tense fact rather than recollection, detached from emotion in places, comes to a head when she meets what she calls “her Angel”. The demonstration of how each of us is capable of possessing a relationship with one person that simply gets us through even the worst of times has been well done. It's a very hard read, but also tempting in that you get to understand the complexity of Angelica as a human being. There are shocking scenes of sex, lesbianism, child abuse, violence, though these become part of the package, and although I would perhaps have chosen to see them demonstrated in a milder manner, perhaps they would not have worked so well if they had been.

This was the writers first novel, and I shall be interested to see how her writing developed. Having won New Journalist of the Year Award in 1988, and having written this story in 1998, it will be interesting to see how the writer mellows and what she produces now. A worthy debut indeed, though a somewhat startling one.



Paperback: 356 pages
Publisher: Phoenix Press (4 Feb 1999)
Language English
ISBN: 0753806762
1p for this version available from Amazon.


Was it worth buying ? Yes, to me it was. Although not my usual reading material, it did deal with emotions and realities in a very individual way.

Rachel

Summary: A worthwhile read, and very complex.