Don't Move: A Novel [Hardcover]

Margaret Mazzantini (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2004

A rainy day, a slippery street. A skidding car collides with a motor scooter ridden by Angela, a fifteen-year-old girl. Gravely injured, she’s brought to the hospital where her father, Timoteo, is a surgeon. As his daughter lies near death, the handsome, cultivated, eminently respectable Timoteo unpacks a sordid burden of sin and guilt he has long borne in silence.

Fraught with sexual obsession, degradation, and devotion, his confession is the tale of a man who for his whole life has been “afraid to live”—with one passionate exception. Silently addressing Angela, Timoteo bares his soul, and the events of the year before her birth open like a wound.

As Timoteo’s tale begins, he’s driving from the city to the beach house where his beautiful, accomplished wife, Elsa, is waiting for him. Car trouble forces him to make a detour into a dingy suburb, and there he meets Italia—unbeautiful, unpolished, working-class—who awakens a part of him he scarcely recognizes. Disenchanted with his stable life, he seizes the chance to act without consequences, and what ensues is startling and savage. Is it rape? Or something mutual, animal, completely new to him? Returning again and again to Italia’s dim hovel, he finds himself faced with a choice: a life of passion with Italia, or a life of comfort and predictability with Elsa.

“Suddenly, driven by an absurd rebellious impulse, you look for the bones of the man you would have liked to be,” Timoteo explains to his unconscious daughter, as if asking forgiveness for preferring the passionate life he glimpsed so briefly.

In vivid, intense, masterful prose, Margaret Mazzantini has crafted a tale that electrifies from start to finish, drawing us deep down into the darkness of primal passion.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this story of a tragic romance, as told by a father to his comatose teenage daughter, Italian actress and novelist Mazzantini plays with the choices people make as they construct narratives, especially what they remember and tell in times of crisis. The decision to frame the narrative as a father's confession makes for an odd conceit, considering the lurid details the protagonist shares about his sex life with both his wife and lover. Timoteo is a successful surgeon with a distant relationship with his beautiful wife and a sexually obsessive relationship with his mistress, Italia. He is selfish and capricious (he meets with Italia just hours after his daughter Angela's birth), but he also exhibits flashes of lucidity that make him an engaging if maddening narrator. "You've learned more about me from my absences, my books, my raincoat in the hall, than you have from my flesh-and-blood self," he tells his unconscious daughter, Angela. Mazzantini keeps the plot moving, shifting quickly between Timoteo's memories and his agonizing wait during Angela's surgery. Too often, though, her prose is overwrought and clumsy: Timoteo relates that his lover's tears "burned [him] like lava," and describes himself waiting in the hospital after Angela's birth like "a moth that's been trapped in a room too long... its wings as heavy as cork." Timoteo's honesty offsets the turgid writing in this enjoyable if somewhat awkward novel, as he traces the trajectory of the sordid relationship that still haunts him, from the "viscid pleasure" in its illicit sex to its predictable aftermath.
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Review

Praise for Don’t Move


“Margaret Mazzantini’s prose is singular, refined, rich in imagery, and instantly recognizable. Every sentence, every word seems to have been chosen after careful scrutiny, brightening the texture of the narrative like so many cunningly mounted pearls.” —Corriere della Sera


“[Don’t Move]’s pitiless psychological insight, ferocious existential probing, and rare emotional impact instantly reveal the writer’s lofty intelligence and moral force.” —Diario


“A writer of great talent and intelligence, a narrator of surprising honesty, whose work does honor to our literature.” —Oggi

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese (May 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385510748
• ISBN-13: 978-0385510745
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,024,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A BRILLIANT EXPLORATION OF OBSESSION, May 26, 2004

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Don't Move: A Novel (Hardcover)

A searing tale of sexual obsession "Don't Move" grips readers with riveting opening lines: "You ran the stop sign. You had your imitation wolf-skin jacket on, your headset was plugged into your ears, and you never even slowed down."

The accident victim is Angela, the only child of Timoteo, a highly respected surgeon, and Elsa, also successful, an independent modern woman. The couple had discussed at length whether or not to give Angela the scooter she so desperately wanted. They had given in at last.

As Timoteo sits alone by his daughter's bedside he realizes she is close to death. This fact, in some mysterious way causes him to reevaluate his own life. He remembers his past, the year before his daughter's birth and his inexplicable passion for Italia, a poor woman he met in a small town bar. His car had broken down, and he was stranded.

Italia was the antithesis of his wife, "She was neither beautiful nor very young, with badly bleached hair and a thin but strong-boned face. She was wearing too much makeup, which made her bright eyes look sad."

Nonetheless his desire for her was undeniable. Reliving his past Timoteo silently pours his anguished confession into the ears of his comatose daughter.

Told largely in flashback "Don't Move" is a marvel of prose as Mazzantini adroitly tells parallel stories of Timoteo's well ordered life with Elsa and his all-consuming, passionate affair with Italia.

Born in Ireland and raised in Italy, Mazzantini is an incredibly skilled writer. "Don't Move," which has sold over a million copies in Italy is her second novel and the first to be published in America. All one can say is welcome to our shores!

- Gail Cooke

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling story, but nevertheless Brilliant, January 21, 2006

By 

Kick-Azz-Angel "sherlizz" (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Don't Move: A Novel (Hardcover)

The main character tells his daughter who lies in a coma his story. The story of his most intimate feelings towards different people. Obvious his love for his daughter and his fear she might die. The fact that over the years the love towards her mother has gone. And most of all its the story of the obscure relationship for an unknown woman he picked up somewhere, and the graphic account of the raw sex he has with her.
And after a while there is a change in the horrifyingly selfish abuse of the main character towards this unknown woman.
This book is chilling, tender and loving at the same time.
It has in the meantime been travelling my circle of friends. Each and everyone finds it overwhelming. This is a must read for sure.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BRAVISSIMO, March 22, 2005

By 

J. Lynch "giuditta6" (Chicago) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Don't Move: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read the Italian version "Non Ti Muovere" and just finished the English translation...what an excellent job done! Mazzantini captures the reader beyond a normal level. I wish the book would never end. If you like her work, "Il Cantino di Zinco" is also very well written, although out of print in English.