In 1997, in the hills of Abruzzo, Italy, a shepherd assaulted three women while ostensibly helping them find a hiking trail. Two of the women died, but the third survived. This chilling crime, which you can read more about here, is the nucleus of The Brittle Age, Donnatella Di Pietrantonio’s somber meditation on trauma and resilience.
“Italian Quilt” by Mikeachim is licensed under CC BY 2.0 
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The story begins, however, in 2020, with Lucia, whose daughter Amanda, has come home from college because of COVID restrictions. Amanda’s struggling to get out of bed in the morning, won’t shower, and refuses to eat most of the time, but won’t tell Lucia what’s wrong. Lucia is mid-divorce and is also quarreling with her aging father about the land she will inherit someday.
Classic sandwich generation stuff, but, sadly there is more. Back in the 1990s, Lucia’s best friend, Doralice, was shot and nearly killed in a violent crime that took the lives of two other women. Lucia was supposed to be there, but lied to Doralice about her plans and went to the beach with some other friends instead. Now she feels it’s her fault Doralice was attacked, and has never taken the chance to make amends.
This is a dual-timeline book, with chapters alternating between Lucia’s present domestic struggles and the narrative of the crime. The ratio of fretful thoughts to crime narrative is fairly high, and it takes a lot of patience and compassion to ride along with Lucia’s guilty conscience. But the tense retelling of the crime is riveting, made all the more so because you know what’s going to happen, just not how.
Knowing that Doralice survives was the only thing that me going through the crime narrative; while it’s very, very good, I was personally more interested in Lucia’s process. The generational differences between Lucia and Amanda’s healing were also interesting to me. as Amanda seems to find her way more easily than Lucia does. I could imagine a mother and daughter reading this together and using it to unpack how traumatic the last decade has been, on both the personal and global scales.
It’s a haunting story that will resonate with a lot of women and AFAB folks, because many of us are so intimately acquainted with traumas both big and small, as well as more responsibilities than we can carry half the time. If that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, you can skip the present-day timeline chapters and just read about the crime and the trial. But I think the book is more resonant woven together the way it is. The past is never truly past; we carry it with us always, and the only question is, how can we make it fit with the rest of our baggage?
