Strangers I Know
A Novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
"Durastanti casts the universal drama of the family as the sieve through which the self-woman, artist, daughter-is filtered and known." -Ocean Vuong
A work of fiction about being a stranger in your own family and life.
Every family has its own...
A work of fiction about being a stranger in your own family and life.
Every family has its own...
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"Durastanti casts the universal drama of the family as the sieve through which the self-woman, artist, daughter-is filtered and known." -Ocean VuongA work of fiction about being a stranger in your own family and life.
Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudia's mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery. Both parents are deaf but couldn't be more different; they can't even agree on how they met, much less who needed saving.
Into this unlikely yet somehow inevitable union, our narrator is born. She comes of age with her brother in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a small village in southern Italy and New York City. Without even sign language in common - their parents have not bothered to teach them - family communications are chaotic and rife with misinterpretations, by turns hilarious and devastating. An outsider in every way, she longs for a freedom she's not even sure exists. Only books and punk rock-and a tumultuous relationship-begin to show her the way to create her own mythology, to construct her own version of the story of her life.
Kinetic, formally dazzling, and spectacularly original, this book is a funny and profound portrait of an unconventional family that makes us look anew at how language shapes our understanding of ourselves.
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MythologyMy mother and father met the day he tried to jump off the Sisto Bridge in Trastevere. It was a good place to jump-he was a fine swimmer, but once he hit the water, he'd be paralyzed, and the Tiber back then was already toxic and green.
My mother always walked liked it was raining, head down, shoulders hunched, especially when she was alone, but that day she stopped on the bridge, and saw a boy straddling the rail. She came closer, laid her hand on his shoulder, to pull him back; maybe they scuffled. She persuaded him to calm down, breathe slowly, then they took a walk through the city, got drunk, and wound up at a hotel with stiff sheets that stank of ammonia. Before dawn, my mother put her clothes on and left. She had to get back to her boarding school and my father seemed so restless; she didn't even shake his shoulder to let him know she was going.
The next day, she stepped outside the school with her girlfriends and saw him leaning against a car, his arms crossed, and right then, she knew she was doomed. I've always envied her mystical, woeful expression when she speaks of him at that moment; I've always been jealous of that apocalypse.
That day in front of her school, my father wore tapered jeans, a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he was smoking a Marlboro Red-he smoked two packs a day.
He'd come to pick her up in front of the state institute on Via Nomentana, and that's when their life together began.
"How did he manage to find me?" she'd say. When I was little and she told me this story, she transformed my father into a mysterious wizard who could capture us anytime, anywhere, and I hugged her tight and didn't answer and wondered what it was like to be desired that way by a man.
Then I grew up and started pointing out the obvious: "There was only one school for
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people like you in Rome. It couldn't have been all that hard." She'd nod, then shake her head: he found her because he had to. Though their marriage ended, she never regretted pulling him off that bridge: he was deaf, like her, and their relationship held something closer, something deeper, than love.
My father and mother met the day he tried to save her from an assault in front of the Trastevere station.
He'd stopped to buy cigarettes and was about to get back in his car when he noticed the sudden, erratic movements of two thieves; they were kicking a girl, trying to yank away her purse. After he threatened them and scared them off, he stopped to help my mother and persuaded her to go back home with him to wash up. He was still living with his parents: when they saw this girl-barely out of her teens, her dark skin, her hair wet from the shower-they thought she was an orphan.
At age twenty, my mother had a wide, bawdy smile, smoker's teeth, straight black hair to her shoulders, not a good look on anyone; sometimes she pulled her hair back with a tortoiseshell barrette. She lived at boarding school but often stayed out at night; she studied sporadically. She took small jobs to supplement what her parents sent from America, but she rarely showed up to work on time.
From the day he appeared, they started going out: they spoke the same language composed of gasps and words pronounced too loudly, but it was their behavior that drew looks on the street. They shoved past people as they walked, not turning to apologize, exuding difference: he had light brown hair, full lips, aristocratic features; she barely came to his shoulder and seemed to have stepped out of some guerrilla squad.
Back then, my father would pop up out of nowhere: often, when she'd be leaving to see her family in America or disappearing for a few days, or much later, when they'd separated, and he showed up at the departures terminal at the exact right mome
My father and mother met the day he tried to save her from an assault in front of the Trastevere station.
He'd stopped to buy cigarettes and was about to get back in his car when he noticed the sudden, erratic movements of two thieves; they were kicking a girl, trying to yank away her purse. After he threatened them and scared them off, he stopped to help my mother and persuaded her to go back home with him to wash up. He was still living with his parents: when they saw this girl-barely out of her teens, her dark skin, her hair wet from the shower-they thought she was an orphan.
At age twenty, my mother had a wide, bawdy smile, smoker's teeth, straight black hair to her shoulders, not a good look on anyone; sometimes she pulled her hair back with a tortoiseshell barrette. She lived at boarding school but often stayed out at night; she studied sporadically. She took small jobs to supplement what her parents sent from America, but she rarely showed up to work on time.
From the day he appeared, they started going out: they spoke the same language composed of gasps and words pronounced too loudly, but it was their behavior that drew looks on the street. They shoved past people as they walked, not turning to apologize, exuding difference: he had light brown hair, full lips, aristocratic features; she barely came to his shoulder and seemed to have stepped out of some guerrilla squad.
Back then, my father would pop up out of nowhere: often, when she'd be leaving to see her family in America or disappearing for a few days, or much later, when they'd separated, and he showed up at the departures terminal at the exact right mome
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Autoren-Porträt von Claudia Durastanti
Claudia Durastanti; translated by Elizabeth Harris
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Claudia Durastanti
- 2022, Internationale Ausgabe, 304 Seiten, Masse: 12,8 x 19,8 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Übersetzer: Elizabeth Harris
- Verlag: Riverhead Books
- ISBN-10: 0593541472
- ISBN-13: 9780593541470
- Erscheinungsdatum: 11.02.2022
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Praise for Strangers I KnowStrangers I Know lies at the intersection of memoir, literary criticism, and bildungsroman,
bleeding fiction into fact in order to explore the mythologies that have shaped Durastanti s life and sensibility symphonic. Paris Review
Part documentary, part fiction, part literary criticism a coming of age story spiked with the same brand of vitriol that springs up from works like Greta Gerwig s Lady Bird and Virginia Woolf s A Room of One s Own. The Observer
The language in Strangers I Know, wonderfully translated by Elizabeth Harris, is precise
For Durastanti, language has the power to perform an excavation of the self in the attempt to bring the inexpressible into understanding. Ploughshares
"Formally innovative and emotionally complex, this novel explores themes of communication, family, and belonging with exceptional insight. Durastanti, celebrated in Italy for her intelligent voice and her hybrid perspective, speaks to all who are outside and in-between. Strangers I Know, in a bracing translation by Elizabeth Harris, is a stunning English-language debut."
Jhumpa Lahiri
Playful, looping, atmospheric and funny, Strangers I Know is a singular achievement, one of those rare books that expanded my understanding of what a novel can do. Claudia Durastanti is an absolutely thrilling writer.
Lauren Groff, author of Matrix and Fates and Furies
"Brave and deeply felt... Here the novel is not only a medium of illumination, but also a buoy cast into the dark waters of memory, imagination, and boldly embodied questions. In other words, it is my favorite kind of writing, the kind that not only tells of the world but burrows through it, alive.
Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
"A fiercely inventive, lyrical journey into the heart, and into the cultures of America, Italy, and England.
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Durastanti's singular voice and the intensity of her honesty stayed with me. I've never read or heard anything like this book."
Krys Lee, author of Drifting House and How I Became a North Korean
Claudia Durastanti's writing is lyrical and sharp, underpinned with a searching gaze that turns the everyday into something darkly beautiful. Every page feels totally, absorbingly, alive.
Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
The story of an upbringing full of obstacles. Like a Dickens character, Claudia goes from one mishap to the next, always keeping her curiosity of the world and her capacity to feed deep affections. Rai Cultura
Halfway between Natalia Ginzburg and Joan Didion, Durastanti s [Strangers I Know] is her Family Lexicon. L Independente
Krys Lee, author of Drifting House and How I Became a North Korean
Claudia Durastanti's writing is lyrical and sharp, underpinned with a searching gaze that turns the everyday into something darkly beautiful. Every page feels totally, absorbingly, alive.
Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
The story of an upbringing full of obstacles. Like a Dickens character, Claudia goes from one mishap to the next, always keeping her curiosity of the world and her capacity to feed deep affections. Rai Cultura
Halfway between Natalia Ginzburg and Joan Didion, Durastanti s [Strangers I Know] is her Family Lexicon. L Independente
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