The Chill (Europa Editions) [Paperback]

Romano Bilenchi (Author), Ann Goldstein (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 27, 2009 | Series: Europa Editions

Romano Bilenchi?s classic coming of age story, never before published in English, is set in northern Tuscany in the 1950s. The small hill towns and rolling Tuscan countryside provide a suggestive and constantly changing backdrop to a story that is thoroughly Italian in its particulars?its smells, sounds and sights?but universal in its themes.

Here, the changing seasons stir both the vibrant hues of Bilenchi?s Tuscany and the many moods of his young nameless protagonist. But the abiding atmosphere in this tale is, as the title suggests, wintery. Following the death of his beloved grandfather, a chill has descended upon the teenage narrator of this classic tale, leaving him estranged from friends, family, and eventually even from nature itself? although always vivid and animated, the natural splendor of central Italy becomes increasingly harsh and hostile throughout this story. The protagonist?s growing awareness of his own and others? sexuality leads to a series of difficult, confusing encounters that push him even further within himself. Each small awakening, each intimation of the adult world, with all its alarming ribaldry and vulgarity, drives him further from his kind. His reluctant journey into the adult world culminates in a seemingly innocent erotic adventure that, when discovered, will possess all the destructive potential of a natural disaster and at the same time all the potential for rebirth of a new spring.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A teenager in 1920s Tuscany slowly realizes the callousness of humanity in this first English translation of Bilenchi's (1909–1989) haunting novella. The nameless narrator watches his family's powerlessness in the wake of a drought, hard financial times and nasty neighborhood gossip. After the drought, the boy is unnerved by his grandfather's apparent dementia, and his suspicions that all relationships are tenuous are confirmed when he loses friends over trivial matters. But then an irreconcilable rift occurs between the narrator and his best friend, and the story gains momentum. The focus shifts from descriptions of the Tuscan countryside to appropriately jarring accounts of the boy's sexual awakening, the most disturbing of which involves Gino, a farmer's son who preys on young women in a sunflower field. The narrator is both interested and repelled by sex, but it's not until he stays with a group of family friends, who recount abortions and unhappy marriages, that he truly understands that his innocence is gone. Goldstein, an editor at the New Yorker, beautifully translates this timeless tale of discomfort, rejection and isolation. (Nov.)
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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 99 pages
• Publisher: Europa Editions (October 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933372907
• ISBN-13: 978-1933372907
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,274,853 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "A subtle chill came over me, whenever [I recalled] the people with whom my existence was entwined. I fear the slightest change", December 5, 2009

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Chill (Europa Editions) (Paperback)

The last novella written by acclaimed Italian author Romano Bilenchi before his death in 1989, The Chill, written in 1982, is a coming-of-age story so universal that it could just as easily have been written in 1902 or 2002. Set in the mid-1920s, in the hill towns between Siena and Florence, the novella recreates the story of an unnamed narrator dealing with the pangs of adolescence--and though the setting is dramatically different from that of J. D. Sallinger's Catcher in the Rye, or L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between, or any of the other coming-of-age novels one might recall, the issues are similar, if not identical in many respects.

The emphasis throughout is on an adolescent's awareness of the losses represented by the death of family members, the changes which accompany death, the importance of memory, sexuality as a life force, and the differences between perceived truth and reality itself. In this compact novella, Bilenchi emphasizes the external world in which his speaker lives--replete with malice and even vengeance exacted by people he knows--rather than some self-generated teenage angst--and his speaker's problems come less from within than from without. Whether one is "good" or "bad" as perceived by local consensus becomes more important, in many respects, than any universal concept of good or evil.

The unnamed main character is an innocent sixteen-year-old when he accompanies his math professor in high school, and his all-boys' class, on a once-a-week hike into the nearby Tuscan hills between Siena and Florence. His grandfather has been ill recently, and has been showing signs of senility, compulsively imagining his family's participation as ancient Longobard (Lombard) warriors in the area's history. While the grandfather is trying to assert some long-time association with history to guarantee his own memory, however, the speaker is just trying to get by as a teenager who loves his grandfather but must deal with the real, existing, world and the interrelationships which govern it. On the speaker's return from his hike, he discovers that his beloved grandfather has passed away, a traumatic experience which dramatically affects his life.

The speaker, who experiences a "chill" at the changes that have occurred in his life, soon discovers even more dramatically that friendships are fickle. Harassment, even by "friends," occurs with regularity toward those who are seen as "different," and the mob mentality rules. Often lonely and isolated, the speaker, who is also dealing with his growing sexuality and the frustrations that involves, is not sure how to deal with his need to be accepted and the conflicts he feels about his role in a wider world. Ultimately, the speaker's discovery that "it wasn't possible to live among other people if all of a sudden they could attack one another with such ferocity" leaves open the issue of what a teenager is to do to survive these attacks, and rings with the recognition of truth. A coming-of-age classic. Mary Whipple

5.0 out of 5 stars A piece of world literature that should not be ignored, February 15, 2010

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Chill (Europa Editions) (Paperback)

Adulthood can't be avoided, and if you try, you'll be dragged into it kicking and screaming. "The Chill" is an English language debut of Romano Bilenchi's coming of age tale, set in the early twentieth century between the wars as a young man comes of age and the challenges he faces as a young adult who may not be prepared enough for the challenges ahead of him. A fine view of the Italian culture of the period, "The Chill" is a piece of world literature that should not be ignored.

4.0 out of 5 stars A Universal Coming-of-Age Story, December 10, 2009

By 

Ismail Elshareef "ielshareef" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Chill (Europa Editions) (Paperback)

"The chill of suspicion and incomprehension came between me and humankind when I was sixteen." This is how our unnamed protagonist begins his achingly familiar story about becoming a man in the real world.

Living in Tuscany in the 1920's, the protagonist is sixteen-years old and just lost his grandfather to old age. The loss--monumental in every respect--marks a shift in his perception of adult life, and adults in general. Standing on the precipice of adulthood, he studies it as if it's a piece of an overripe apple that he's reluctantly considering buying.

He contends that it isn't "possible to live among other people if all of a sudden they could attack one another with such ferocity." It's his innocence talking and it's precisely the loss of innocence that gives our protagonist the "chill."

Part of the inescapable process of becoming adults is that we shed our childhood innocence and replace it with an armor that helps us navigate the "real world." The shedding process--that inevitable fate--is what's at the core of this book.

Our unnamed friend's journey into adulthood, as dramatic and chilling as it is at times, is so relevant and real. His encounters with the fragility of friendships, the hollowness of death, the explosion of sexuality and the dullness of shame are timeless and tireless themes that usher us into the world of grownups. He has to learn the hard way to become a man.

I didn't know much about the book when I picked it up a few months back, but I'm so glad I did. Bilenchi's prose in these 84-pages is classical and refined (Ann Goldstein did a wonderful job bringing the Italian text to life with precise and beautiful locution.) In addition to the protagonist's engrossing story, the Italian countryside setting is so delicately and thoroughly described that it makes the story that much more captivating.

This short story managed to capture the essence of adolescence like no other novel or novella has. The shedding analogy I used earlier can really be summarized in one word: rebirth. As we go past our adolescent years we are in fact reborn with calibrated sensibilities and a wiser (or damaged) perspective.