During the summer of 1996, in the Italian countryside, 12-year-old Valentina experiences unsettling changes that alter her life forever...As Valentina explores her growing sexuality and deals with her relationships with friends and boys, she comes to believe that these horrifying things are all her fault...Yet, as she later learns, all three women carry their own guilt, secrets, and regrets that bind them to their family home, 'the blind house,' and to each other...Using the biblical story of the ten plagues of Egypt, Manfredi’s debut is a coming-of-age story that showcases, with powerful descriptions and poetic prose, the intergenerational clash and unspoken guilt between three women.
During the summer of 1996, 12-year-old Valentina gets her period for the first time...Unprepared for the situation, she keeps it to herself initially, the first step in her developing awareness of her sexuality and its related power...Among many subsequent and, perhaps, surreal occurrences recounted by Valentina, the odd-looking house her family has occupied for generations also seems to begin bleeding...A series of plagues—closely resembling those described in Exodus—appears to descend upon the homestead and prompts Valentina’s ailing grandmother to attribute blame for what she believes to be a curse on the household...Valentina endeavors to make sense of her place in a world inhospitable to girls seeking freedom and within a family where secrets reign over truths...Manfredi delivers Valentina’s narrative, as translated by Oklap, in a straightforward and unapologetic tone consistent with the bravado and insecurities of adolescence.
Manfredi’s English-language debut is an evocative tale of one young woman’s coming-of-age in 1990s rural Italy...Valentina is 12, an only child living in an ancient crumbling farmhouse with her pious grandmother and troubled mother...Valentina wakes one morning to a spreading stain on her bedroom wall, which she believes corresponds to the shame she feels about having her first period...Terrified of her body’s changes and troubled by her grandmother’s references to a family curse and biblical retribution, Valentina decides she has brought on a plague...Meanwhile, her mother is busy wooing a new boyfriend, her grandmother rapidly descends into terminal illness, and her best friend has broken off their friendship out of jealousy over a local boy...The melodious prose enhances the coming-of-age scenes and Valentina’s religious guilt, but too often the plot points are dropped or unexplained...Though it feels unresolved overall, the accomplished prose is a testament to Manfredi’s potential.
