IN HIS OWN IMAGE

What if God was one of us?

When restless Corsican teenager Antonia receives a 14th birthday present of a camera from her doting uncle, a priest, the direction of her life changes. Antonia’s unnamed uncle is also her godfather—although “god” father is probably more accurate—and Ferrari’s affecting account follows the sequence of the requiem Mass the uncle celebrates for her years after her death in a car accident. Much of Antonia’s adolescence is immersed in the turmoil of Corsican partisan activity thanks to a youthful romantic attachment, and she supports herself with a stultifying job as a photographer for a provincial paper. Eventually, she is drawn to photograph the horrors and grotesqueries of the destruction of Yugoslavia. Her life ends shortly after she has an impromptu reunion with a combatant she knew during that scarifying time. Ferrari, a Prix Goncourt winner, revisits the history of war photography, which, along with Antonia’s growing fascination with the allure of violence, creates space for discussions of evil, love, complicity, and the responsibility of the artist. Joycean sentences, some of epic length, propel readers through the consciences and consciousnesses of agonized characters dealing with grief, regret, and love—or, in short: through life. At the beginning and after the end of Antonia’s meaningful existence, she is cared for and guided by her enigmatic uncle—who experiences internal anguish of his own about the petty and human realities of parish life—and she shares with him her observations about the depravities witnessed in her quest to create images. Whether or not Antonia’s uncle serves in some divine capacity, the story his gift sets in motion provides Ferrari with an opportunity to explore the limits of human love and suffering.

Moral questions take on human form in Ferrari’s stunning narrative.