Claudio Morandini’s “The Stones” published by Timaş Yayınları

Claudio Morandini’s “The Stones” published by Timaş Yayınları with a translation made by Esma Fethiye Güçlü.

Everything is moving in this novel: the inhabitants of the alpine village of Sostigno are always around, going up to the mountain huts of Testagno and soon after they come down, in ever more frequent and frenetic transhumance; the river is stirred, or rather the torrent, which “certain loops invents the night, and in the morning we discover them as a Christmas present on the contrary”. Above all, the stones move. Of course, the valley was formed on debris, on unstable scree: but the geological data is not enough to explain the bizarre phenomena that have affected the villagers for decades, that kind of hyperactivity of the mineral world that multiplies the stones in the fields, in the houses, everywhere . Substantive people, however, do not complain too much, but rather try to exploit the exuberance of the product to their advantage. Recent events intertwine with the past history of the Saponara spouses, retired citizens who landed in the mountains: it is precisely in a room of their “Villa Agnese” that the first stones materialized out of nowhere, accumulating day after day in a crescendo between Ionesco and Buster Keaton.

Iride Zanardò and Don Danilo, Nonno Ramaglia, Giacometti with Tarella and Cappon, are just some of the voices of a choral novel, in which the stories of an entire community are intertwined; and it is an amused and restless polyphony that, like during a long night of vigil, wandering between past and present, between the upper world and the underworld, contaminating drama and comedy, ghost-story and fable, evokes the intricate and unavoidable bond with the stones.

7 March 2019