THE SMELL OF HAY

by Giorgio Bassani ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1975

These stories of Bassani's special social milieu--the Jewish-Italian middle class of Ferrara seen on the eve of the Fascist anti-Semitic laws--have a dimension of irony as well as human waste. They are all told from the perspective of memory, that of a narrator who declares that he himself is hearing the words of those far-off quiet days before the crisis ""as if recorded on a tape."" He was a young man then with a sensitivity to the nuances of character that would typify his work, and the first half of this collection is taken up by a series of seemingly artless sketches of young Bassani's contemporaries and their disappointments and frustrations at coming of age under the threat of war or interment. Several reminiscences are gathered under the rubric ""Les Neiges d'Antan."" ""More News of Bruno Lattes"" contains the key reference to the smell of hay near the Jewish cemetery which recalls the funeral of Bruno's grandfather, as well as a subtle, fragment about the disaffection of his spoiled goyisch lover. The piece de resistance, however, is ""The Gold-rimmed Eyeglasses"" (dated 1958)--a long novella tracing the disgrace of a homosexual doctor whose identity as a victim is shared by the narrator when the ""so-called question juive"" comes to a head. The Finzi-Continis, whom you will remember from both book and film, appear here as possibly the only family in Ferrara who even up to the last were not ""prescient of the sad future in store for the young people of our generation.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1975

Categories: FICTION