Customer Reviews

The House by the Medlar Tree

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"I Malavoglia" is one of the most beautiful novels about the life in South-Italy in 19th century. I personally am grown up on the countryside in South-Italy and, even if I live a century later than the Malavoglia, I still can find in the place where I live some of the colours and sounds that I love in this book. Someone may find the style disturbing, because of the lack of participation by the writer, but it is something Verga purposedly tried to achieve ( it is the Realism ), and it should not prevent you from enjoying the story told in this book ( even if it is a sad story, like are all the stories, that try to be truthfull). If you really want to get nearer to the heart of such a beautiful country like Italy ( and especially South-Italy)is you really should read this book.

How many times have you heard a story recounted, not gotten as excited about it as the teller, and had them say "You had to be there."

Verga's novel was a classic in it's day. It's stark portrayal of life in the small fishing town of Aci Trezza at the turn of the century is considered to be groundbreaking Italian fiction. The translation and Verga's own pacing may not appeal to the average modern reader. When it was written, it was in the vanguard of neo-realist fiction. It is laudable for that fact alone. But it has a deeper hidden treasure that can be spirited out to a select few.

If you're one who has actually been to southern Italy or Sicily and witnessed small fishing villages on the beautiful coasts, this book is for you. I lived in the small town of Aci Trezza where this book transpired and can honestly say the sights, sounds, people, and rituals are still intact as they're described in the book. If you have been there, this book will rekindle memories of places and sights you've seen before, though now personified. If you have not but plan to, either read this book before you go or take it with you and read it while eating a briosche from Eden Bar in Aci Trezza. The walk down to the rocks off the coast that night will have a different and more beautiful meaning.

You had to be there!

This novel was written in 1889 and set in 1863 in a Sicilian fishing village within walking distance of Verga's native Catania. My paternal great-grandparents spent their lives in a similar village on the northern coast of Sicily. Reading this novel brought back my Grandmother's voice telling stories of the fishermen with variations on the proverbs, superstitions, Catholicism and village gossip of Verga. In Verga's novel, ownership of the house is lost through payment of a debt to preserve the Malavoglia's family honor. In my family, the two fishing boats were sold to protect the family honor from a false accusation. In the Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel, Verga is written about extensively in a chapter about realism. This book is a delightful validation of social history in post-unification Sicily. These peasants were hard-workers whose family and religion gave meaning to their lives.

If you wondered what life was like in Southern Italy
before our relatives all decided to leave, read this book.
In a non-maudlin manner, the author describes life in this little town, social mores and attitudes from a long ago time.

Well translated, easy to read. Very touching book. An interesting study in family dynamics and the life of a small community.

A tale of the decline, fall, and at last, rebirth of the unlucky Malavoglia family in a small Sicilian hamlet by the sea, Verga's novel of Sicilian village life in the 1860s and `70s is told with considerable warmth, some humor, and a fistful of proverbs. No individual is the focus and psychological depth is completely lacking. Rather, we read about a number of villagers---relatives, suitors, neighbors, town characters---and the story itself dominates. Though I've visited Sicily, I can't claim any real knowledge of the place. After reading Verga's novel, I felt I'd re-visited the island, seen behind the tourist facade and gotten a historical picture. I don't think we can say Verga ranks as one of Italy's or the world's great novelists because we never get inside anyone's head, nor is there much philosophical outlook. But, on the other hand, the story is interesting, with many twists of Fate. It is very realistic, if not deep. The inhabitants of Aci Trezza fill the pages with romances, intrigues, dark deeds, life and death, but because the author refers to them interchangeably by name, nickname, profession (`the barber'), or family title (`aunt, son, daughter, cousin'), it took me a long time to sort out who was who. The house by the medlar tree of the title is the Malavoglia's home, which stands for stability, tradition, and comfort---owning a house gave place and status to the family. Moving away from it was fraught with disaster, and the disaster was the loss of that stability and comfort. What happened to the family, and whether they ultimately repossess the house by the medlar tree is what you will find out if you read the novel. I can't say it is the best novel I've ever read, but as a picture of village life Sicily in the 19th century, it's probably hard to beat, picturesque and full of detail. If you read the book in conjunction with Danilo Dolci's "Sicilian Lives", di Lampedusa's "The Leopard" and Charlotte Gower Chapman's "Milocca", I think you would have a very rich picture of Sicilian life.

This is catalogued as the most representative work of Italian "verismo", the reflection of Zola's and others' French Naturalism, that is, an extreme form of Realism, depicting hard facts with no concessions to sentimentalism or a wish for a happy ending. It tells the story of three generations in a family of fishermen in a miserable Sicilian vilage. Their family name "Malavoglia" means the "ones with bad blood", and it shows. Constantly facing bad fortune, with some brief periods of respite, the Malavoglias suffer sudden and steep descents within their society's narrow bounds of status. Blow after blow, they fall further down in their neighbors' estimation. One character to highlight is the patriarch, an emblem of the dynasty, who keeps his family united after each adversity, deseperately trying to retain some sort of dignity and pride. However, after each blow they sink more and more into debt, discredit, and heartbreak. The hardest setback is the loss of the family house, the one by the meddlar tree, after a bad business deal. Decadence becomes inevitable then.

This novel is the crude portrait of a miserable and unmerciful world. It denies the claim that, among poor people, there is more solidarity and humaneness than among the better-off. The cast of characters is exhaustive: every social role (in a very small, simple community) is portrayed and plays a part, revealing the meannes and cheapness of it. Certainly noy a beach-read nor an uplifiting one, it is however a good book that manages to handle some poetry within the bounds of a depressing situation.

The book is about a family's misfortunes in a small fishermen's village in Sicily at the beginning of the XX century. The book opens with a tragedy that undermines the financial stability of this big family of poor people. It is about their struggle to cope with it, and their failure because of misfortune. The original title "I malavolgia" could be translated as "the indolent family"; the title is a pun because the family is not indolent at all (well, maybe except for one component), rather they work very hard to solve pay their debts, but when destiny is against you there is nothing to do. In the end the last member of the family manages to regain possession of the house they lost because of their debt, but their social and economic condition is definitely lowered. Because the family tried to ameliorate (although only a little bit) their economic condition, they are punished by fate that makes them struggle to regain less of what they had before. This moral of the story and the feeling of sorrow that pervades the book are the reasons why I did not like it and I give it only two stars. But the book received much praise as one of the highest examples of Italian realism.