THE HUMMINGBIRD

One man’s life story, told in nonchronological fragments.

This sprawling novel encompasses the life of Marco Carrera from early childhood to old age. Celebrated Italian novelist Veronesi skips backward and forward through the timeline of his protagonist’s life, deploying not only traditional third-person prose, but also letters, dialogue, and even an academic talk to tell his story. The bulk of the novel is dedicated to Marco’s relationships with the women in his life. As a young man in Florence, Marco falls in love with his neighbor Luisa, with whom his brother is also infatuated; as an adult, he carries on a platonic affair with her that fractures his marriage. He remains close, however, to his daughter, Adele, whose childhood attachment to him manifests as a fantasy that she has a thread attached to her back. Later, he grows even closer to his granddaughter, Miraijin, who winds up becoming a famous activist. Veronesi’s unconventional narrative approach is, at first, beguiling. As the book progresses, however, the author's troubling depictions of women detract from his novel’s strengths. We find out that Marco fell in love with Luisa when she was 13 and he was 20, a detail the novel fails to acknowledge. Meanwhilie, Marco’s “clinically insane” wife, Marina, brings a petition of divorce against him that includes false allegations of abuse when she finds out about his relationship with Luisa. The novel’s greatest failure, though, is Miraijin, whom Veronesi describes in uncomfortably sexual terms and as “the literal embodiment of the utopian ideals of multiculturalism.” Unsurprisingly, she never feels like a real person.

An intriguing but ultimately disappointing experiment in fictional biography.