CASTLE OF SHADOWS

The lives of an Italian Piedmontese family are traced across generations in this novel.

In the opening to this intricate family history, the first-person narrator, Antigone, confides that “cameras have always played an important role in the lives of the Ducati family.” The book centers on a family archive, with the narrator describing various photographs and documents, then “filling in the narrative spaces with action and dialogue.” The first photo to be examined is a group portrait taken in 1908 outside the family seat, the castle of Cortalba in Piedmont. The picture depicts the narrator’s great-grandparents Pietro and Olga Ducati along with their daughter Ada, the narrator’s grandmother, and Giulia and Luca, two of their other children. The narrative springs from these characters. It is revealed how Pietro and his brother Leo traveled south to Rome for work and established a biscotti business, after which Pietro married Olga, the daughter of a Genoese ship owner, and bought the castle at auction. The work recounts the stories of numerous other family members, such as Andre, Leo’s son, who moves to Hollywood and establishes himself as a movie director, and Alma, daughter of Ada, who marries Dardo, an actor and direct relative of the pirate Sir Edward Walton. Luca, meanwhile, frequents a brothel and becomes infatuated with a savvy prostitute named Catarì. Divided into three parts spanning the late 19th and 20th centuries, the novel charts how the family copes with rapid change across Europe, such as the rise of Fascism. Featuring a cast of 15 principal characters and over 80 others, including a domesticated leopard, this tale has considerable scope that could easily have proved sprawling. Some concentration is required, particularly since a number of the players have similar names; Alma is also known as Mina, for example, and her daughter is called Nina. Yet the way in which the author refers to photos is a clever way of isolating particular stories and characters to limit potential confusion: “In all the photographs Luca is wearing the same stunned expression in his cerulean, lifeless eyes, and a faint smile seeking his audience’s approval: ‘I’m handsome, aren’t I?’ ” These passages, which exemplify Lawton’s (Amy’s Story, 2017, etc.) keen and elegant descriptive skills, also tantalizingly hint at aspects of each character’s personality, which becomes more evident as the story unfolds. The result is a patchwork of lives that have been painstakingly sewn together. There is also a deep sense of Italian regionality to the tale. The players sip Moscato di Canelli and eat Biscotti Torinesi, both Piedmontese products. Translated from the Italian by Shugaar (The Athenian Woman, 2018, etc.), the narrative occasionally sounds unnatural or ungrammatical to the native English ear. This awkward passage is an example: “It’s not as if there weren’t fraternization among them. There was.” Similarly, candies are described as being “all wrapped individually, with legends written in different colors according to the flavor.” The use of legends is not incorrect, but labels would prove a more natural word choice. Still, this marginally off-key translation detracts little from an elaborate and far-reaching tale that makes for compelling reading.

A family saga that boasts ambitious, sophisticated, and controlled storytelling.