Liberation: A Novel [Paperback]

Joanna Scott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 25, 2008

"Deeply moving. . . . Joanna Scott brilliantly captures war as seen through the innocence of a child." -Bookpage

Adriana Nardi is only 10 years old when Allied forces occupy her lush island home during World War II, plaguing the quiet Italian village with violence and uncertainty. Amdu is a Senegalese soldier who abandons his comrades and befriends Adriana after witnessing an unspeakable act that has far-reaching repercussions.

Decades later, on a commuter train bound for Penn Station, 60-year-old Adriana revisits her memories of the war and her doomed relationship with Amdu, even as a present crisis threatens her life.

"A prismatic and quietly powerful look at war. . . . Scott pulls off kaleidoscopic shifts of observation with a depth of vision possessed by great writers." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Beautifully realized, exquisitely constructed, and fascinating. . . . A calming and beautiful book to read for consolation, in these dingy times." -Washington Post Book World

"It may be about World War II, but this book is as timely as can be." -Marie Claire

"Scott's voice remains one of contemporary fiction's most eloquent and essential." -Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The morning after her 70th birthday party, attended by her dutiful husband and children, Adriana Rundel takes a commuter train from suburban New Jersey to Manhattan, and becomes lost in memories of her WWII girlhood [...] in hiding on the Italian isle of Elba. Stealing glances from her hideout in the cupboard, she finds her first love, a young AWOL Senegalese soldier named Amdu Diop, who takes refuge in her family's home during the Allied push toward liberation. He is 17; she is 10. Theirs is an innocent infatuation rather than an intense affair, but that seems to be precisely what Scott (The Manikin) is after: "The truth was she liked Amdu because he was perfectly alive.... She just felt it, the way she felt the warmth of the sun." Their attachment is lovely, but doesn't provide much dramatic lift. And the heart attack Adriana suffers on the train ride into the city, which intermingles her childhood panic with her later-life mortal fear, is less a plot device than a means for integrating the vivid past with the dull present. Still, Scott accomplishes large shifts in time and perspective with grace, and delivers an affecting, unsentimental portrait of a survivor taking stock of her life and loves.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Returning to Elba, an island off the Tuscany coast, also the setting for her earlier Tourmaline (2002), Scott deftly whisks readers back in time to a cupboard in which Adriana Nardi silently hides from a new wave of invaders during World War II. It's clear from the beginning that this is a book to be savored line by line, as Adriana's stream-of-consciousness narration reveals her childish perspective on the nightmare of war and her relatives' infighting, as well as her first experience with love and compassion. Every scene contains emotionally charged images, from the brutal death of a girl raped by African soldiers to the miracles performed out of kindness by the wounded Senegalese boy Amdu. Writing in a lyrical, sometimes surreal style, Scott employs the same flashback techniques honed in her previous novels to juggle between Adriana in the present--age 70, suspended between breaths, possibly dying--and Adriana in the past, reliving a distant time when a stranger saved her life. A rich, multilayered literary novel. Jennifer Baker
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books (February 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316018899
• ISBN-13: 978-0316018890
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,312,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful prose!, January 5, 2006

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Liberation: A Novel (Hardcover)

Joanna Scott is an award-winning novelist, and Liberation is her eighth book.

Liberation starts with 10-year-old Adrianna Nardi hiding in a cupboard overnight, stuffed there to keep her safe from the liberating forces on the island of Elba. It is 1944.

Adrianna lives on the estate of La Chiatta with her mother Giulia. Once out of the cupboard she explores the estate and comes across a young Senegalese soldier, a part of the French liberating forces. He is escaping from his own army, after witnessing the aftermath of the rape and murder of a young girl.

Amdu Diop is an unusual young man, one who knows he is too good to kill. Adrianna communicates with him in her broken French. At their initial encounter he helps hide her from some brutish liberation forces that come to La Chiatta looking for collaborators.

Gunshots are fired simply to scare the residents. Adrianna runs back to her mother when this episode is over, but later brings some food and a blanket to the place where she last saw the young soldier.

These memories are interspersed with the story of Adrianna Rundel, age 70, traveling by train to Penn Station. It is the present day, and Adrianna is experiencing difficulty breathing, and eventually loses consciousness in the aisle as the train pulls into the station.

The narration of 10-year-old Adrianna, and of young Amdu, in a situation not of his choosing, where he is forced to kill or be killed, is absorbing and real. The landscape of Elba is so genuine you almost feel the rain and the dust. Scott's commentaries on the futility of war and violence are timely.

Armchair Interviews says: Scott is praised for her use of language, and Liberation is no exception.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars well written character study, November 8, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Liberation: A Novel (Hardcover)

Sixty years have passed since the war, but Adriana Rundel still remembers like it was yesterday. In fact just yesterday she celebrated her seventieth birthday with her spouse Robert and their children. This morning as she rides the commuter train from her Jersey Suburban home through Newark to Manhattan, she suffers a heart attack and quickly vanishes inside her memories of WWII hidden by her affluent family from the Nazis as a ten years old Jewish girl on the isle of Elba.

In 1944 on Elba, Adriana Nardi sees the teenage apparently AWOL Senegalese soldier Amdu Diop, who is hurt, separated from his unit, and trying to hide. As she tries to help the injured bungling soldier, she also becomes infatuated with him while he hopes to become a savior of mankind. However, her family will tragically soon intercede.

LIBERATION is a well written character study that compares the present with the past in the life of a survivor. Intriguingly Mrs. Rundel does the comparison between her exciting but dangerous childhood during WWII especially once her soldier enters her life to the boring but safe septuagenarian she has become. Though the other passengers on the Penn Station bound train seem like intruders on a personal tale between the lead protagonist and the audience, fans of powerfully profound dramas will treasure Joanna Scott's insightful tale.

Harriet Klausner

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Worth a Read, February 15, 2006

By 

FictionAddiction.NET - See all my reviews

This review is from: Liberation: A Novel (Hardcover)

She was a girl, worthy enough to be hidden in a cabinet.

When Allied Forces invade the Italian island of Elba in June of 1944, Adriana Nardi's mother hides her daughter in a kitchen cabinet of their villa home. There she is safe from the war, from the Allied soldiers and , most importantly, from the march of time.

Time seeks to take Adriana. Already she is ten, almost eleven. The beauty and innocence of her spirit must be protected.

Amdu Diop, Senegalese soldier, future doctor, saint of his self-made religion, yearns to be free of desire. He wants to be safe at home, living a simple life and healing people with both medicine and prayer.

When Amdu is separated from his unit and grazed by a sniper's bullet, he comes to La Chiatta, home of Adriana Nardi. There he must rely on the goodness of the girl and her family for his survival.

War is war, and in the midst of it anything goes. The logical connection between cause and consequence is broken. Amdu must grapple with not only the ugliness in others, but the ugliness in himself and in a crime in which he is complicit.

When an act of heroism leads to tragedy and a fateful bargain with God, will Amdu and Adriana survive the time of justice?

The adult women of Adriana's family are difficult to distinguish and the book's use of French and Italian may be a struggle for some readers. However, the plotting and characterization more than make up for any inadequacies. Liberation sweeps us into its narrative flow and pushes us towards its inevitable conclusion. It reminds us that time is all consuming and challenges us to value every moment.