Re-discovering New Haven for CNN Travel

I got to visit New Haven on the company dime and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Now you can, too -- here's my story. It's part of a series we've been doing for three years on the best towns in America that fly under the radar and are often far from the major metropolitan areas.

New Haven is home to Yale -- which you can see in this photo I snapped -- and it's also one of the most walkable cities I've visited in the US.

Here's a note I scrawled in my journal:

New Haven is glorious! I don’t really say it happily but rather with a not-so-healthy dose of jealousy and what-if-ism! It would appear getting into Yale is a golden ticket in more ways than one. You get to live in a beautiful, vibrant city that’s walkable and architecturally alluring (in addition to studying at one of the finest universities in the world).

Before I forget: New Haven is for walkers. I walked so much. So it was really unavoidable that I’d love it, I suppose.

Also, my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, was on the shelf at Atticus! YES!

Interesting fact: I gave all of my leftovers to men on New Haven Green who appeared to need food.

Moment of beauty after the visit: I bought Leo a small puzzle of the painting The Wave at the Yale Art Gallery and he really liked it. He asked to open it immediately and then instead of watching TV, he began to assemble it. When we turned on “Father Ted” after a bit, he didn’t pay much attention to it, preferring instead to painstakingly find pieces of boats that appear in the painting.

(The Yale Art Gallery is quite nice and I didn’t even get to visit the sculpture garden – home to an Alexander Calder – because of the rain).

Anyway, please read my CNN story!

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What I bought at I AM Books in Boston (2026)

Last year, I gave a talk about my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, at the Italian bookstore in Boston. It was wonderful to speak about this short story collection that I'd lovingly translated while surrounded by Italian books.

So when I visited Boston this year, I made a beeline for the store. I AM Books is in the Italian North End of the city, and it's adorable.

What I like: there are Italian books there -- which may seem quite obvious but it's important to state because it's not easy to buy Italian literature in the US at a reasonable price, or at all. There aren't that many shops that stock titles in the original language -- Rizzoli in New York is one place. And I AM Books is another.

But logically, the shop also stocks Italian books in translation (a good reason to give a talk about a translation there). Many people who pass the store won't be fluent in Italian or studying the language but may want to discover Italian literature in translation. 

As you can see, the shop also stocks magazines, and boy do I like that. If your store sells La Settimana Enigmistica or Bell'Italia, I will most likely need to buy a copy of one or both of them. And Mike bought a cooking magazine!

While remaining a solid bookstore that sells books, I AM Books also has a lot of fine gift items that a shopper might want as she visits the North End of Boston and becomes immersed in the Italian quarter. I went a little crazy last year when I was there to give the talk, and bought a cookbook plus a book for Leo about Italian hand gestures and a book by Natalia Ginzburg and... 

Last but not least, the store manager is a lovely person! She took charge of my reading, and made the shop a cozy place to talk about this book that means so much to me.

So if you're visiting Boston, consider stopping by I AM Books. And if you read or study Italian, don't just consider it -- make a point of visiting the store. You won't be sorry!

I AM Books

124 Salem Street

Boston, Mass.

iambooksboston.com 

What I read in 2025

Not a great year in reading for me and I am all to blame, a self-inflicted wound owing to distraction and commitments related to the translation (I also taught a class at Wesleyan, which requires me to re-read a lot of books from the course text list and thus neglect any non-course books I may have been reading). 

But I do like to log the year in reading and so here are a few books that sparked my imagination in significant ways:

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs

The experience of reading John and Paul was so seismic that I wonder if perhaps I've been excluding a genre that I would otherwise love, namely biographies.

It’s been a while since I devoured a book the way I read this book. As I wrote in my journal, "I’ve been staying up until 11 p.m. reading it – not looking at Facebook, not fooling around with the laptop. Just reading as much of the book as I can manage – running to it whenever I have a moment free."

Am I reading the wrong books? So should I be reading more biographies? Or books about rock icons I love?! (Quick! Someone send me a biography of Bono and/or U2)

I think childhood -- and childhood obsessions -- could be the key here. When I read about the Beatles, it's as though I am reading about someone I knew – as if someone wrote a biography of St. Anthony’s High School or the streets of Florence or my mother. I followed the Beatles so closely as a young girl that I suppose that's why. As I wrote on Goodreads, it was part and parcel of my girlhood obsession with the Beatles to explore in minute detail the inner workings of the Lennon-McCarthy songwriting partnership, and thanks to this wonderful dual biography of the two Beatles, I can do just that. For anyone who's ever had any kind of Beatle worship, this book is essential. And what an interesting concept! Exploring this relationship as a one-of-a-kind partnership that eschews easy definition. 

I read another book that fascinated me while also being revolting:

Nobody's Girl by Virginia Giuffre

I both recommend and don't recommend this book by one of the best-known victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Would you like to confront pure evil? On the other hand, I made a point of purchasing the hardback so that my purchase could be counted in the hopes there are many, many sales. Sales = interest. Sales = this topic is important.

Per my routine, I also read a book by French novelist Patrick Modiano (which I was even able to review for the Boston Globe) and I re-read A Christmas Carol, something I've been doing every year at Christmas for about a decade (it's worth reading each year a line with which Marley chastises Scrooge: "Mankind was my business! The common welfare was my business...")

And I read another book that satisfies my nascent need to know everything about Nazi-occupied Europe: The Propagandist. I wrote about it for the 'What We're Reading' rubric published by The Common literary magazine (back in March). It's a fascinating though also revolting book about a French family that was pro-Hitler during World War II and most notably long afterwards as well! I believe it caused a bit of a stir when it was published in France. 

I also began reading (not read, in the past tense) (see distraction above, also insistence on reading multiple books at once) Eichmann in Jerusalem, the seminal account by Hannah Arendt of Adolf Eichmann's infamous trial for war crimes. There are a few books in the world that are so fundamental for understanding human behavior that you can glean quite a bit by reading half or failing to finish, and this is one such book. What I read about Eichmann's attitude, his ordinariness, his spoken testimony at the trial, the fact that he lived for quite a few years (dare I say happily?) in Argentina before being captured, all of this furnishes me with new horrifying information about the semi-recent historical event that engrosses me the most. (But I plan to finish it this year). 

Similarly, I read a book I'd long been searching for: Lettera da Francoforte by "my" author, Edith Bruck (translation: Letter from Frankfurt; not available in English). I found it at Il Libraccio in Florence -- a review copy, I believe, since on the front it says "inedito," ('unpublished'). It's the story of a Holocaust victim who tries to apply to a compensation program run by the German government. No, I do not know how autobiographical this work is but I'm going to see if I can find out. Did Edith ever apply to this fund? Is this fund real? I've come to know a little bit about the Claims Conference, which distributes compensation to victims of the Holocaust but I don't believe it is run by Germany.

Please review 'This Darkness Will Never End' on Amazon

I've been talking up my translation every way I can -- blogposts, public readings, bookfairs, Facebook messages, a trip to Ohio, mentions in a family Christmas newsletter, you name it!

And I've been foisting this work on everyone I know since it was published last April.

But I've neglected to say anything about reviewing This Darkness Will Never End on Amazon. Probably because I was born in 1850, as I like to say (I also like to add that Leo corrected me one day with this quip: "More like 1770." Ouch!) And also because I've been focused on readings, my dayjob, Leo, breathing, etc.

I do, of course, use Amazon! All the time. 

And I do want people to find it on Amazon! A famous author actually did just that and she got in touch with me, which was amazing.

You don't need to be famous to leave a review on Amazon of This Darkness Will Never End.

You just need to have some thoughts about the translation or Edith Bruck. So if you've read it, I hope you will leave a review and provide some honest feedback. Here's the link again:

https://www.amazon.com/This-Darkness-Will-Never-End/dp/1589882016

GRAZIE di cuore!

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Meeting Donatella Di Pietrantonio at Rizzoli this year

At an event at Rizzoli in Manhattan earlier this year, I asked Donatella Di Pietrantonio to autograph one of her books that I love -- L'Arminuta (English: A Girl Returned) and when I told her I did some translation work, she gushed over the efforts and mission of literary translators (I do, too, largely because I am still trying to find my footing in this essential branch of literary philanthropy). Take a look at her message: "A Jeanne, grazie per il grande lavoro che fa." Translation: "To Jeanne, thank you for the important work that you do."

The book is a novel set in the author's native Abruzzo, and Di Pietrantonio is one of a wave of Southern Italian women authors who have emerged in the literary landscape remade by Elena Ferrante.

I reviewed the translation for the Kenyon Review and as I noted in the review, Di Pietrantonio "grapples with the holy trifecta of human emotions (and thus, fiction): love, longing and loss." It is the stunning story of an adoption undone but so much more than that. To quote the review again:

For much of this novel, published in Italy in 2017, the narrator is caught between two mothers. Di Pietrantonio often figuratively—and skillfully—sets one mother against the other: “Every Saturday the mother in the town was obliged to give me a small sum, which came by some means or other from the mother on the coast.”

No surprise, the author is a class act! How lovely it was to meet her, at a conference dedicated to Italian literature (which, hint hint, I hope Rizzoli and the Italian Cultural Institute will host again in 2026).

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Please Give the Gift of Reading ‘This Darkness Will Never End’

As long as I'm alive, so are they -- in my books, in my heart.

This precious thought is one of many that Edith Bruck ("my author") shared with me in July when I visited her in Rome. We were speaking about her parents, and in Italian, her words were, "Finché vivo, vivono loro ... nei miei libri, nel mio cuore."

It's a sentiment that resonates deeply with me, even though my life's story is completely different from Edith Bruck's.

I, too, will do anything to keep the memory of my parents alive. And I'm so grateful that they conveyed the importance of literature, and also that they signaled to me early in my life the critical, painful and cataclysmic moment in modern history represented by the Holocaust.

In her case, she's kept alive the memory of two souls who were cruelly persecuted and then executed by the Nazis in 1944. For more than 80 years, she's borne witness to their tragic ends.

And the least I can do, as a translator of her work, is spread the word about her work, and share in the toil in one tiny way by translating her short stories.

Publishing This Darkness Will Never End, my translation of Edith's first short story collection, has been the highlight of my year, and it's given me membership in a club I deem quite special: the group of translators of Edith's work. They are translators of work by an Italian woman author. And last but not least, they are translators of works by Holocaust survivors. 

The colorful stories in this collection unearth a lost way of life: the rituals, preoccupations and joys of devout Jews living in rural Hungary in the years leading up to World War II. There are stories about the fearsome shochet who deems meat kosher -- or maybe not! -- and stories about the desperate but occasionally hilarious ways a poor man may attempt to feed his family.

The Holocaust looms like a specter in many of the stories -- sometimes only in the background, sometimes as the engine that drives the story to its harrowing climax -- but these tales are also testaments to the power of love and the primacy of familial bonds.

Her personal story is mesmerizing. Deported as a teen by the Germans, she survived Auschwitz and eventually made her way to Italy where she quickly mastered the Italian language, which became the instrument of her deliverance. She's published fiction, nonfiction and poetry. So treasured is she in Italy, Pope Francis insisted on meeting her and the two struck up a wonderful friendship.

At 94, she continues to write, dream, remember, share.

To those of you who have read the book, my thanks always. As you contemplate gifts for Hanukkah and Christmas, will you consider giving someone you love This Darkness Will Never End? 

You can buy the book on Amazon, at Bookshop or directly from the publisher. You can also buy it at Barnes & Noble, available to order and pick up at your local store or read as an e-book.

As I told the students at Otterbein College where I was invited to speak this Fall, this darkness will never end but thanks to Edith Bruck’s persistence, it has been transformed into literature, which will light the way for generations to come. And thanks to the great fortune I have to be the translator of this book, I have met so many of you and heard your impressions of the stories in addition to the impact of Edith Bruck's life on your understanding of the world and what it means to be human. We belong to a community of readers and that's a membership card that I hold dear. How big can we make this community? Help me make it very big.

Thank you!

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Memento shrine (Italy) 2025

Christmas morning for me, if somehow instead of Santa Claus coming down the chimney it was Babbo Natale.

My memento shrine, the haul from two weeks of consuming everything I love from il Bel Paese and my ode to all of the little items I stud my daily life with, in a bid to retain a bit of Italy in my otherwise suburban American life.

It may seem like an odd habit, these memento shrines, especially since I don't shop much back here at home. And what an example of conspicuous consumption! One magazine wasn't enough -- I needed three, plus the Settimana Enigmistica, my favorite puzzle  (there are competing puzzle magazines, but this is the real McCoy, to be clear -- wink wink), and several editions of the newspaper I read in Italy, Il Corriere della Sera, (the copies are buried in the photo under the striped box containing coffee cups from Bialetti, which constitute a somewhat new obsession: buying sets of coffee cups with Italian expressions on them for our morning coffee. Once upon a time, we were arranging trysts in hotel rooms in Madrid -- true story! -- now I consider it some mark of our love that every morning our coffee cups "match" because they form a set). (These cups read "Amore mio" -- my love/my beloved -- and "Sole cose belle" -- only beautiful things).

And, of course, books. As I mentioned I was able to find a book by Edith Bruck that's out of print, a Natalia Ginzburg that I needed (because I have now accepted that I will read one or more of her books every year, not unlike the ritual re-reading of A Christmas Carol) and three books from Giuntina, which has published many books by Holocaust survivors, and which I bought directly from the publisher, a lovely turn of events for many reasons (this haul includes Tagebuch by Liana Millu, the author of Smoke Over Birkenau; this latest acquisition is the notebook she kept as she journeyed home from the concentration camps at war's end).

The photo above represents not only my own consumption but also Leo's: the pricey Ferrari shirt? It ain't mine! Ditto the pale green sweater and sweatpants from Benetton (on mega sale!).

Other items of interest:

*A baby bottle of Vin santo

*Every possible permutation of Florentine paper gifts -- wrapping paper, note cards, posters, note pads

*Cans of fancy tuna in olive oil for the chef

*Biscotti for our morning coffee (a new kind! Mike is obsessed with ones that are integrali because he thinks they are healthier)

It's actually less of a haul than in previous years. When I win the lottery -- as Mike often says -- I am going to Italy and buying everything the newsstand guy (il giornalaio) sells and every book I've ever wanted at Feltrinelli and all the biscotti in the world (which is to say at the Conad supermarket) and every kind of Florentine paper, including Florentine wallpaper if that exists. And since we're talking about the lottery, an apartment in Florence.

Curious about previous memento shrines? This one is coffee-themed:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2017/06/italian-trip-2017-post-12-what-i-bought.html

And the more restrained Montreal edition:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2019/09/montreal-memento-shrine.html

Wow, I've been at it a while:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2011/04/christmas-in-april-il-nostro-inviato.html

Signed,

Your Italian memento scout

Scenes from a mini-book tour -- THIS DARKNESS WILL NEVER END

I arranged a small book tour to support the publication of my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, but secretly it was a friends-and-family tour where beloved faces greeted me at every stop.

Philadelphia was the city of brotherly love if by brotherly you mean two of my oldest and dearest friends (Jeanette and Tina), and a cousin (Brendan).

In Boston, one of my best college friends (also my closest Jewish pal and hence a constant muse during the translation) hosted me for the first reading (while also propping up my ego!). Thank you, Michelle! Thanks also to those who attended, including Ellen, a Boston-area translator, and kind friends of Gabriela Block.

On my second go-round in Boston, my sister, Denise (in photo below), and my brother-in-law, Mike, attended, plus one of my dearest and oldest friends -- Beth -- hosted me in addition to attending the reading with her son. 

And in New Jersey not only did my (other) sister, my brother-in-law, and my aunt and uncle come to the reading but a cousin -- MARY KATE!!! -- drove up from D.C. Amazing!

New York reading: another of my oldest and dearest friends attended, plus two translation-world friends, (Jenny and Ann!).

Plus, in West Hartford, not only were Mike and Leo on hand (ready for the 'darkness' to end), but also many of my friends and neighbors! As if this weren't enough, my undergraduate thesis advisor was on hand for my reading in Middletown! Cecilia Miller advised my thesis on Machiavelli and has backed every other professional achievement I've had.

Two of the readings were actually conversations. In New Jersey, I was paired with a local rabbi whose father, like Edith Bruck, was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor! It was an engrossing discussion. And in New York, I invited Philip Balma from the University of Connecticut (above), a scholar of Bruck, to join me. It was wonderful because his knowledge about Edith and her work knows no limits!

In addition to this mighty slate of readings last month, I also attended a college reunion at Wesleyan where I found a copy of my translation on display in Olin Library. I had asked the library to purchase a copy -- you can do that as a faculty member, even an occasional one like me! And they may or may not buy the book. But no one told me it would be on display during my reunion and no one mentioned how humbling that would be (other adjectives: insanely cool, generous, thrilling. Maybe now I can get past ranking near the bottom of my class???).

I haven't even touched on the questions I received -- good ones! A man at Newtonville Books in Boston wanted to know about the evolution of perspectives on writing fiction about the Holocaust. In West Hartford, a member of the audience asked about the dictionaries I liked to use, which allowed me to drone on and on about the large, multi-volume dictionaries at the New York Public Library that not only provide entry upon entry of potential meanings but also instances of usage throughout the history of Italian literature. A word I was puzzling over was first used by Boccaccio in the 1300s, for example!

There were also questions about what aspects of the stories were inspired by Edith's actual experiences of deportation and survival -- in some cases, I didn't know the answer. And maybe I should. I hope to see her this summer -- do I dare ask if classmates yelled "Heil Hitler" outside her window as happens in "Come to the Window, It's Christmas"?

It was also fascinating to see (FEEL!) the reaction of people to a speech Edith wrote that I translated earlier this year and which I read in addition to an excerpt from This Darkness Will Never End.

It's called "My Alma Mater is Auschwitz," and it's as devastating as that title would suggest. It gives a good overview of her life but more importantly, the light that she managed to find in a place of profound darkness, which of course is a perennial theme in her work and yet another reason to admire her. And translate her work.

I don't know how many books I sold. And it matters! Not for my bank account but for the life of the book -- for the possibility of spreading the word about Edith Bruck.

But I think I sold a lot of people on the notion that we should keep gathering together to talk about books, and in particular, we should continue to read the work of Holocaust survivors. We still have so much to learn. Also, why not try a book by an author you don't know at all?

I have been invited to speak at the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts in the Fall, and the first invite is virtual so it's open to everyone. I'll post details here and also on social media.

My thanks to all of the venues that hosted me:

I AM Books

Philadelphia Free Library

Newtonville Books

RJ Julia

West Hartford Public Library

Montclair Public Library

Italian Cultural Institute (NYC)

*

My thanks also to everyone at Paul Dry Books -- two of my collaborators were at the reading in Philly!

I hope to be able to speak again about this translation to groups. It would be cool to appear on a podcast! Do I know anyone who hosts a literary podcast? Invite me on!

Fingers crossed there will also be more reviews of the translation. I am grateful for this review from the Jewish Book Council! And this one by Foreword Reviews.

To all who attended the readings, ETERNAL THANKS! You gave up a night or an afternoon, and gave me the thrill of a lifetime. And don't be shy about sharing your opinion or asking questions (either in the comments here or on social media or via email). I loved that question in Boston about the evolution of ideas on fiction about the Holocaust. So astute, and it gives us a chance to situate the work in context -- how it lives in conversation with other works.

The readings, after all, illuminated how we as humans live in conversation with one another about books and life and the history of the world that brings us to this moment in time.

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What I bought at I AM Books (Boston)

I don't get to visit Italian bookstores often because well, I live in America and there aren't many Italian bookstores here (more French bookstores I would say, and I say that with envy).

So when I had a reading at I AM Books in Boston, I had to make a few purchases, including the cute little book you see here, which was a gift for the Little Italian Language Learner.

I felt like it might contain a curse or two and that ranks very high on Leo's list of things he wants to master!

Italian curses!

I also bought a cookbook for Mike, a special edition of Calvino's Invisible Cities and a Natalia Ginzburg book because I now know I need to read something by Ginzburg every year -- I need to, and I simply do. This year all kinds of new Ginzburg books, perhaps because I've accepted the full-blown obsession and place her, oddly, in some ways, next to Sciascia, Fitzgerald and Joyce, three authors I frequently re-read (I suppose I could add Dickens to the list, since I re-read A Christmas Carol every year, but I digress).

The bookstore is in Boston's North End, the traditional Italian quarter, and I have to say it has a very nice selection of Italian books (i.e., decent size), both for adults and children, plus American books and all kinds of gift items I didn't have enough time to peruse.

I AM Books

124 Salem Street

Boston, Mass.

iambooksboston.com 

Newtonville Books is book heaven

I had the honor of reading at Newtonville Books in the Boston area yesterday and I am slightly mad at the words I am writing because they sound so tired and trite. 

If I tell you I felt like I fell asleep reading and then woke up in book heaven, would that convey how delicious this bookstore is? Somehow the space is carved into the side of a glorious old stone church, making it feel like a book cave in the interior but also a book sunroom in the storefront part on the street that's full of windows. And they have every book you want, and also those books you didn't know you wanted, and the special composition notebooks and lovely bookmarks and a spacious children's section.

And Mary Cotton, the owner, is a Book Saint! (thanks to husband Jaime for the invite to the store).

And the folks that came -- my family, one of my oldest friends and her son, fellow Bennington alums, and one random guy who asked a very astute question about the evolution of theories on writing fiction about the Holocaust -- were delightful!

(And, side note: the porridge at Johnny's Luncheonette is surprisingly delicious!)

So a perfect day, thanks to Newtonville Books and the wonderful people I've come to know in my life!

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Ciambellina reads at Boston's Italian bookstore

Tonight! I'll be reading at I AM Books in Boston.

That's Beantown's Italian bookstore!

A place I've long wanted to visit (and where I expect I will stock up on all kinds of Italian books).

Nicola, who owns the store, was the first bookseller to graciously agree to host me so I could spread the word about This Darkness Will Never End.

And he did a beautiful job with the flyer!

I look forward to speaking to Boston's Italophiles about this 1962 Italian short story classic, and the woman behind it, Edith Bruck. At 93, she continues to be an important voice in Italy's literary world.

To register, visit this link:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jeanne-bonner-presents-this-darkness-will-never-end-tickets-1329961293029 

Come to a reading of 'This Darkness Will Never End'!

(UPDATED) As the official publication date (Apr. 22) of my translation approaches, I bring news of several readings I'll be doing in the Northeast, starting this month. 

I'd also like to share information about buying This Darkness Will Never End if your TBR pile can stand another title! (Links to the usual purchase points are below).

And now that my translation is published, I'm looking to see if there are literary (or history) podcasts that will host me. 

Do you have a podcast? I'm a chatster so the podcast will literally conduct itself.  

(It goes without saying if you have a radio show that covers the arts or books, I'd love to be a guest! I don't mean to single out podcasts -- I'd love to talk about this book wherever there are people who want to know about it).

First, the readings (click on link for details, if available):

Thu., April 24 – I AM Books (Italian bookstore) (Boston) -- DONE!

Mon., May 5 – Philadelphia City Institute Library  -- NEXT!

Wed., May 7 -- RJ Julia (Middletown, Conn.)

Sun., May 18 – Newtonville Books (Boston)

 

Wed., May 21 – West Hartford Public Library 

 

Tues., May 27 – Montclair Public Library (NJ)

Wed., May 28 -- Italian Cultural Institute (NYC)

I've begun to assemble notes for the introduction I'll give at each reading, and in some ways it's hard to know where to begin. What do I want to say about Edith Bruck, the author? And what's the most important aspect of the story of this translation?

Is it that this work captures the thoughts and fictionalized experiences of a Holocaust survivor, namely Edith?

Is it the notion that treasures remain buried in the untranslated book pile?

Is it the fact that the title story almost certainly inspired Roberto Benigni's 1997, Oscar-winning film, "Life Is Beautiful"?

Or do I say something about A.I.? I am embarrassed to say I find literary translation very hard! The work required to complete this book-length translation was monumental -- translating, re-translating, revising, proofing, having someone else look over what I'd done, revising again.

I've neglected to say anything about the plots of the stories, which include a young Jewish girl who's rescued by a boy whose father is a Nazi, and a young woman who's forced to live with a distant aunt after World War II swallows up her family, and she finds solace in French poetry.

So much I'd like to say. As I mentioned above, maybe someone could invite me on a podcast!

HOW TO BUY

The book will be officially published on April 22 but you can order it directly from the publisher and it will be shipped to you immediately:

https://www.pauldrybooks.com/products/this-darkness-will-never-end

Or you can buy it from Bookshop:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/this-darkness-will-never-end/21622230

Amazon has it, too.

https://www.amazon.com/This-Darkness-Will-Never-End/dp/1589882016

Thanks to everyone who has bought the book or cheered me on! You have contributed to bringing the stories of Edith Bruck to a wider audience.

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What I bought at Rizzoli (Jan. 2025)

I had to travel light when a few weeks ago I visited Rizzoli, my favorite bookstore in New York City: so just two books. But the one by Donatella Di Pietrantonio? (Borgo Sud) Pinch me! -- I had actually met her that day as part of the Multipli Forti Italian literature conference organized by the Italian Cultural Institute, NYU, Fordham and Rizzoli, among other organizations.

As for Un bene al mondo, by Andrea Bajani, well, I am still limping after immersing myself in his novel, Se consideri le colpe, (stunning English translation by Elizabeth Harris, "If You Kept a Record of Sins," published by Archipelago). It's about a boy whose jet-setting mother largely abandons him to pursue a career -- and a love life away from her husband -- in Romania. I can only hope this new title by Bajani offers slightly less anguish, otherwise I won't recover.

I must admit -- having just reviewed a new Patrick Modiano novel for the Boston Globe -- that I fleetingly eyed the French section. As the Rizzoli shopping bags proudly proclaim, the bookstore carries books in Italian, English AND French!

I'm sure some visit the store because it is stunningly elegant.

Others may visit the store because it is a short block from Eataly, or because it's on a wonderfully tranquil block of Broadway that more or less deadends into Madison Square Park.

And, of course, the shop has dozens of book-adjacent gift items -- the most incredible journals, for example. (And sometimes La Settimana Enigmistica).

But I go for the foreign books, and one day, I am going to give into my urge to buy French books, too!

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Montreal Journal & the joys of travel in 2023

I go to Montreal to speak Italian and shop at an Italian grocery store.

And this year, I got to do both when I visited the Francophile Canadian city, while also writing about it! 

Call me an Italophile in French-speaking Montreal, and a grateful traveler whenever I can get there, which is now more often since I live in New England (the gateway to Montreal, in my opinion).

The post-war period saw a surge of Italian immigration to Canada such that the Italian community is slightly less assimilated there -- or slightly better at keeping traditions -- than in the States, and the culture a little more intact than in say New York's Little Italy. Plus, Montreal has had to fight for its Francophone existence in the wider sea of Canada’s English speakers, and now sees the value in safeguarding other cultures, including their languages. So a stroll through Little Italy ("Petite Italie") is often an occasion for Italian language practice.

At a bakery across the street from the Jean Talon market, a young cashier immediately switched to Italian when he saw my shirt, which had an image of the iconic Italian coffee pot called the Moka. His grandfather was from Puglia, in Southern Italy, he told me, and he learned to speak fluent Italian as a child.

As one person in Montreal told me, "We all speak three languages."

Little did I know when I visited as a child that Montreal would eventually become one of my kindred spots (assuming that places can be kindred spirits in the way people can -- sure feels like it).

What I read in 2023 & what I plan to read in 2024

(UPDATED) I had a special mission this year to immerse myself in Holocaust narrative so I could find a publisher for the short stories I am translating, thanks to an NEA literature grant. Of course, I've been reading Holocaust narrative from the moment I began translating Bruck's work. Well, actually, before that, really, because as soon as I read Primo Levi's first book (If This Is A Man), I understood that this was seminal information -- and I read it in college.

(The collection of short stories by Edith Bruck that I translated has been published: This Darkness Will Never End -- please check it out here or here!)

But I think in 2023, this particular strand of my reading life came into focus: I will never know enough about the Holocaust or World War II, and so I am going to keep studying it until the end of time.

What's stunning: the horror never receded. What Holocaust victims and survivors endured is unthinkable. No passage of time can diminish the pure horror of what they experienced. And it's remarkable -- though that word fails -- how varied survivors' experiences are -- in other words, how many horrific ways Nazis and others found to torment these poor people. So I keep reading (especially accounts by or about women survivors).

I wasn't especially productive, if my aim was to read a lot of books in full. Instead, I read parts of many books. But as I said, the reading I did about World War II and the Holocaust was seminal.

And so I will begin with books in that category:

Holocaust narrative or fiction based on the Holocaust

*L'esile filo della memoria, Lidia Beccaria Rolfi (This book begins a few days before the writer was liberated from the concentration camp called Ravensbruck, which is fascinating because it deals with the saga of afterward. As if the saga of before -- the camps -- weren't enough.)

*Cinque Storie Ferraresi by Giorgio Bassani

*Here in Our Auschwitz, Tadeusz Borowski 

*A Scrap of Time, Ida Fink (a collection of stories that includes "The Key Game" -- devastating)

*Return to Latvia, Marina Jarre (for a review)

*I'd Like to Say Sorry, but There's No One to Say Sorry To, Mikolaj Grynberg

*Women in the Holocaust, edited by Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman (I read this book as part of research for an article I published in the American Scholar about women Holocaust survivors)

Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo (French resistance fighter)

The Parnas by Silvano Arieti

Art from the Ashes (anthology)

Against Forgetting (anthology)

I read other books, of course, though I don't think I broke any records for number of titles consumed. Here's a sampling of what I read: 

Children's books

I have fallen into a habit of auditioning a new genre each year. Last year, it was graphic novels (I also read one this year: Moi aussi je voulais l'emporter; it's by an author I discovered in Montreal). This year: children's books. Specifically by Kate DiCamillo:

*Because of Winn-Dixie

*The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

I guess you could say I've been reading children's books since 2012 when Leo was born, but these two books I read on my own -- Leo didn't have any interest. And they were beautiful. If you are trying to keep some awful tragedy at bay, and not succumb to tears, don't read them. Otherwise, proceed.

(Note, I read these books thanks to an essay by Ann Patchett on the joys of reading DiCamillo's books, regardless of your age)

Department of re-reading

La strada che va in città, Natalia Ginzburg (I could re-read Ginzburg until the end of my days)

Voci della sera, Natalia Ginzburg

Come una rana d'inverno, Daniela Padoan (interviews with three women who survived the Holocaust)

Books I perused (do they count?!)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets -- IN ITALIAN! (From Rizzoli and technically belonging to Leo)

The Pentagon Papers (because Daniel Ellsberg died this year)

L’Art Presque perdu de ne rien faire, Dany Laferrière (as Montreal trip prep)

The bible in Italian (I've never read it in Italian, now have I? So I bought a copy last year)

Books that fell into my lap -- serendipity

Still Life (Fiction) (thanks to my cousin-in-law Stephanie)

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything By David Bellos

Nonfiction

The Years, Annie Ernaux (The final line is a stunner: "Save something from the time where we will never be again." It captivated me so much I memorized the French version as well: "Sauver quelque chose du temps où l'on ne sera plus jamais.")

Strangers To Ourselves, Rachel Aviv

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (in connection with West Hartford Reads, a library initiative)

Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby (in connection with West Hartford Reads, a library initiative)

The Faith of a Writer by Joyce Carol Oates

Other notables

The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You, Maurice Carlos Ruffin (Fiction/Short Stories)

Paris Stories, Mavis Gallant (Fiction/Short Stories)

Reporting Live, Lesley Stahl (memoir)

Scene of the Crime, Patrick Modiano (“…another memory from that time emerged into the light, like strange flowers floating to the surface of stagnant waters.” I wrote a review of it for a small literary magazine, which you can read by clicking on the title.)

What I plan to read in 2024

Another book by Annie Ernaux (Using this guide from the Nobel Prize folks to help me out: https://www.nobelprize.org/what-to-read-books-by-annie-ernaux/)

Whatever Patrick Modiano writes (in translation)

Something/anything by Montreal-born graphic novelist Julie Delporte

Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey (but I said this last year as well so we'll see)

L'Agnese va a morire

At the Mind's Limits

A Farm Life: Observations from Fields and Forests by my friend Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

Leftover from last year:

*The Letters of Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante (Quando verrai saro’ quasi felice)

*Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed

*The Friends of Eddie Coyle

What will you read? What do you think I should read? What did you read this year? Leave comments here or in the post on Facebook. You can see the genres I read -- Italian fiction and nonfiction, memoir, Holocaust narrative, et al -- so please make some suggestions! Or something from a completely different genre. 

Happy reading! And Happy New Year! And happy reading in the new year.

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Pilgrimages I made in Italy (Il Libraccio -- Milano)

I visited as many bookstores as possible when I was in Italy, and had the joy finally of shopping at Il Libraccio (Milano branch), which I had heard about for a long time.

What I bought:

*A back issue of Granta Italia ("Sesso") that I'd wanted for a long time (and at a good price -- better than Amazon, of course; I can now take it out of my Amazon cart!)

*L'Arminuta by Donatella di Pietrantonio

*La Malora di Beppe Fenoglio (largely because I became obsessed with the word 'malora' while translating one of the Bruck short stories and spent hours in the Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library poring over the big Italian-Italian dictionaries with extensive, historic entries on all of the major literary iterations of the word)

I spent a lot of time at the Mondadori store in the Prati neighborhood in Rome. I also spent lots of euros at Libreria Edison in Florence, kind of my "home" bookstore when I am in Florence.

But Il Libraccio is famous in a special indie kind of way.

Plus, because I bought two Einaudi books, they gave me a free backpack!

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The Italian trip memento group photo

How did it start? Why would you do it? Who can say? But as far back as when I lived in Allentown (at least), I've been gathering all the wonderful items I collected during my trips to Italy and snapping a photo of them.

A group photo of my souvenirs.

I even wrote about it for Catapult!

So here's this trip's memento group photo. There's not much that I do that's unique -- there are even other hair-twirlers in the world. There are certainly other pushy, petite broads around (to the Franciscan brother who tried to tell my mother that I was refreshingly outspoken when I arrived at St. Anthony's, my mother said, "She's very pushy!").

But so far I haven't met anyone else who ritually poses her purchases for a group photo after trips abroad.

(I did it when we visited Montreal, too. So foreign souvenirs occupy a special spot in my psyche).

It may stem from a habit I have that's connected with Christmas: I leave the gifts under the tree for as long as possible. That's what we did, growing up. God Bless Pat: she was not one of those mothers who was snatching the wrapping paper from your hands and socking it into a trash bag as you were  still unspooling it from the gift. Nope! You got to revel in opening the gifts and also gaze lovingly at them, day after day during your school holiday.

Similarly, I leave the Memento Shrine (TM) intact for as long as possible. It's an unusual ode to conspicuous consumption for me, not because I am virtuous but simply because I am not a shopper. I still have the lacy jacket-like shirt that I bought in a London thrift store in 1995 as well as the black-and-white scarf my sister, Denise, gave me in high school, because to replace them, I'd have to enter a shop. And not one that sells cutesy Italian paraphernalia. Which brings me back to my point.

Items of interest this trip:

*New Bialetti Moka AND coffee AND mug; I guess the Bialetti company figured they should begin roasting coffee to go with their signature stove-top coffee makers

*Spaghetti definition place mat (it says spaghetti is something you must never go without in your pantry)

*Tins of Callipo tuna

*A picture frame swathed in traditional Florentine paper (and various journals, pencils and notecards -- singlehandedly keeping the Florentine paper industry in business)

*Books, of course, including a back back back issue of Granta Italia, which I had been searching for since on Amazon it costs a zillion dollars

*And the edition of the Corriere della Sera with the headline, "Addio al governo Draghi," which I wrote about already.

I linger over these items because the time in Italy is so precious. And so different. Another Jeanne emerges when I step off the plane. Indeed, all of these purchases reflect the habits of this other person -- going about on foot, making acquisti, collecting mementos (this time: packets of sugar from the coffee bars I visited --- shhh! Don't tell Mike. For some reason, he thinks the house is full of clutter). Oh and also moments. Collecting lots of moments.

It helps that I never have to step inside a big box store. It helps that I don't have to traverse a parking lot to examine the Spaghetti place mat or obsess over the gorgeous paper goods.

Also, that when I am done, I can repair to a bench in a piazza to revel in what I've bought. La dolce vita, in a nut shell.

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Letter from Borgo Ognissanti

I see my life as divided in two: Before Italy and After Italy. As I wrote in my Bennington graduation lecture, "If my life were a novel, the central year dividing the action into 'the before' and 'the after' would be the year I left for Italy on a study abroad program."

Or perhaps you could phrase it this way: My life is divided into the period of monolingual me versus bilingual me, since once I discovered that I could think, speak and write in not one but two languages, there was no going back.

(You, of course, could also divide my life into Before Leo and During Leo, which may make you wonder, how would YOU divide your life?).

Earlier, I wrote that Jeanne on vacation is Jeanne walking while immersed in Italian. But I've speculated, what if all of a sudden Arkansas adopted Italian as its official state language? (Or South Jersey for that matter). Would it have the same ambience? Would it evoke the same gauzy invitation for swooning?

Let's stay on Terra Firma and have me strolling among Italians as they continue the work of Dante in their everyday conversations.

And especially among Florentines as they jabber away in their C-less Italian.

To be fair -- and to add some nuance to this geographical hagiography -- I've described Florentines in my attempts at fiction as a hostile high school clique that hazes newcomers but which you'd nonetheless cut yourself to join (And Senesi -- the people who live in Siena -- and Pisani are arguably snobbier; I've also heard Milanesi aren't the friendliest people).

And yet it is also true that knowing Italians -- knowing them enough that they whisk you off into the country, up a mountain to a rustic restaurant or over to a hidden beach studded with caves -- is like having the secret key to the hidden door (or the hidden key to the secret door). It makes a magical place -- Italy -- truly sparkle.

We had several occasions to insert the secret key in the hidden door; for example at Serre Bistrot, an Oltrarno restaurant you'll find in a private garden (Il Giardino Torrigiani) that heretofore I'd only seen on a map of Florence, even though it's quite close to my old apartment, which I shared with my friend, Irene, who took us to Serre Bistrot. It's described as a secret garden in the heart of Florence, and that's more or less true (specifically near Piazza Torquato Tasso, which you may or may not consider the heart of Florence). You won't stumble over it -- you have to look carefully at the map and seek out what Irene called "an internal road" that leads to the entrance.

We also took a hike! Mike's friend, Dante, took us up into the Pratomagno mountain range near Arezzo so we – or really Leo – could have a break from the painful heat of the cities we had been visiting. And it was delightful. Classic Italian gita – drove two hours (not a half hour, not un’oretta, but a full two hours), had a wonderful lunch al bosco in this rustic little eatery where Mike and I ate half the menu (at lunch!) and Dante had a quartino of wine (at lunch!), and then proceeded to take a short hike in the wonderfully breezy environs of Pratomagno. 

We hiked to a red, iron cross at the top of the crest of the mountain that had been built by ‘Francescani secolari’ in honor of St. Francis, who had spent a great deal of time nearby. The wind was truly delicious, the way Rahawa Haile described it in her essay about hiking, "Going It Alone."

And Leo ran up the mountain. Ran. Literally. 

He was way out ahead and he kept saying to me, “There’s a good view over here.”

There was an organized group of school-age kids and when they reached the summit as we were descending, we could hear them celebrating with shouts of joy. I kept looking back at them as they encircled the cross, thinking, 'This is perfection.'

(When you reach the summit, there's a stamp and an ink pad, which we duly used on my travel journal. Why do I act as though the journal page with the stamps is like a manuscript of Shakespeare? I was careful not to write on the back to preserve it).

Dante had picked us up near the station at 10:30; at around 3 p.m., when I was ready for a nap but casually mentioned that I hadn’t been to Siena in a while, he said, “Andiamo ora se vuoi!” (We can go now if you want). 

And then there's the Italian lesson, courtesy of Cristiano, which I wrote about earlier (maybe every Italian male would have begun the lesson with the word for cuckhold?!). Not to mention the evening we dined at the house of our friend Vicki (German by birth, Florentine by choice) and Leo had his first glass of Coca-cola (in Italy!) while I gazed out at the building's verdant courtyard, which I've described before as 'If 'Rear Window' were filmed in Italy.' 

We are lucky to have such adventures when we set foot back in Italy.

Plus, there are also always new adventures -- ways to stretch this relationship with Italy, because I feel at home in Italy, even when I am not with friends. So I was delighted to see we were staying near the French bookstore in Piazza Ognissanti, a place I'd never needed to patronize since I was plenty busy with Italian books when I lived in Florence. But now that I visit Montreal and in particular the neighborhood Petite Italie, I know that there are bilingual Italian-French books to be had and they are delightful (I have Erri De Luca's Non ora, non qui//Pas ici, pas maintenant in the bilingual edition, published under the Folio series by Gallimard).

Inside the darling little store, the proprietor juggled her infant while answering my questions about the bilingual editions and ringing me up (plus responding to the phone; at one point, I heard her say to an unseen caller, “Buongiorno, si, si ... ah Bonjour, oui nous l’avons….”).

She also patiently put up with the neighborhood lunatic who entered the store to harass her -- and judging by her cool-as-a-cucumber attitude, he comes in often. It reminded me of a Ligabue lyric that mentions "l'idiota del paese" -- the village idiot, whom everyone knew and everyone said hello to, even if he puzzled them.

You may not believe me, but I am leaving out 1,000 other tiny encounters and moments! But isn't that the way with Italy? Especially when you spend the first ~two hours of your day pounding the cobblestones, head up, eyes aglow (and not from the screen of your cellphone).

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