Voices [Paperback]

Dacia Maraini (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 185242527X | ISBN-13: 978-1852425272 | Publication Date: February 1, 1996

Michela Canova, who works for a private broadcasting station, returns to her flat in Rome to discover that Angela Bari - her next-door neighbour - has been stabbed to death. She starts investigating Angela's death and finds her own existence deeply shaken by what she uncovers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you're searching for something fresh in the mystery garden, this paperback original from the author called "Italy's most audacious writer" by the London Sunday Times might just prove to be a breath of spring. Radio journalist Michela Canova, working on a series of unsolved crimes against women, comes home to her apartment building in Rome to discover that her neighbor, Angela Bari, has been murdered. In Maraini's subtle, sardonic hands (aided by a smooth translation by Dick Kitto and Elspeth Spottiswood), the resulting story of the search for the victim's identity as well as her killer is anything but predictable.

From Kirkus Reviews

Quite a jolt for Roman radio journalist Michela Canova's new series on unsolved crimes against women--her reclusive neighbor, Angela Bari, has just been stabbed to death. With shock and shame, Michela realizes she hardly knew Angela, whose name she has to find out from the doorkeeper. Was she an heiress, a model, an aspiring actress, or (as a prostitute hesitantly informs her) a high-class working girl? And was she killed by her breathlessly self-involved lover, her envious sister, or the alleged pimp who's been hanging around her apartment? Or is the culprit (as a consultant at the radio station suggests) the ingrained misogyny of a violent male society, or perhaps the viciousness of human nature in general? Since Maraini (The Silent Duchess, etc., not reviewed) is a novelist of considerable ambitions, and since her estimable heroine, after all, is researching a story on unsolved mysteries, there's no guarantee that she'll ever come up with a solution to this one. The only certainty is that the skein of voices Michela captures in her tape-recorded interviews will go on echoing long after she's taken off the story. ``The fact that she has been so brutally torn apart suddenly seems like something that has been done to me,'' Michela reflects early on. Maraini shines in showing how Michela, in trying to capture a sense of her mysterious dead neighbor, is struggling to define herself as well. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 257 pages
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail (February 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 185242527X
• ISBN-13: 978-1852425272
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,832,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)