onnurtilraun

Starting again, since I had a long-ish break since last time I read it, and also so that I can go with some detailed personal thoughts about the book.

The first chapter is very solid and striking, with the first paragraphs sounding a bit like a fairy tale, only to have Ortese's narration constantly undercut it by noting that it's still the real world - at one point there's a very prosaic mention of the fact that the streets smellled like manure, due to the fact that the time horse carriages were still the main means of transportation. It feels a bit as if she's constantly going "Just keeping it real, son". However, the sarcastic edge gets a bit lost due to the very flowery prose - if the intention was to be sarcastic at all, but I'll see as I go further on with the book.

And speaking about the writing, in some descriptions Ortese just overuses commas, almost as if she got paid by the number of them she put in the manuscript. Even for a language like Italian, that allows for much longer sentences than English, it's a bit too much.