ILARIA, OR THE CONQUEST OF DISOBEDIENCE

An 8-year-old girl kidnapped by her father lives on the run with him in 1980s Italy in the English-language debut from a Paris-based author and visual artist.

Hanging upside down on the playground by her knees, Ilaria pictures her favorite gymnast, Nadia Comăneci, while waiting for her sister; since Ilaria’s parents separated, the girls have been living with their mother in Geneva. Instead, her father, Fulvio, arrives, saying there’s been a change of plan. What follows is the upending of Ilaria’s life. Her father drives her from Switzerland to France, and then to Italy, stopping constantly to make telephone calls but never letting her talk to her mother. “Phone booths are cages on the frontier between three worlds. When Dad starts talking, I see all three dancing around inside that little box: Mom’s world, Dad’s world, and the world of the freeway.” He buys her lemonade at bars, takes her shopping for toys, pinches her cheek, asks, “Are you happy?” Writing from Ilaria’s first-person perspective and in the present tense, Zalapì keeps the focus tightly on Ilaria’s experience as her father drives from town to town, avoiding the police. “We live in profile, Dad and me. I know the outline of his nose really well, the oval shape of his ears, the hairs that stick out from his eyebrows, just above his glasses frame.” She feels a responsibility for him even as he sends telegrams to her mother like: “Passing on your daughter’s disappointment for not talking to you STOP I reject all accusations of abduction STOP.” Short on money, he uses Ilaria to help claim luggage lost by strangers at train stations. He drinks more and more, “sweats, splutters, gesticulates, yells.” Yet even as he grows increasingly erratic, Ilaria can’t hate him.

A nuanced portrayal of a child’s lost years with a flawed and irresponsible parent.