Ties

by Domenico Starnone, Jhumpa Lahiri (Translator)

Overview

The Strega Award–winning Italian author’s “scalding and incisive” novel of marriage and family bonds that come undone in the wake of an affair (Library Journal, starred review).

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

A Sunday Times and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year

Winner of the 2015 Bridge Prize for Best Novel

Italy, 1970s. Like many marriages, Vanda and Aldo’s has been subject to strain, attrition, and the burden of routine. Yet it has survived intact. Or so things appear. The rupture in their marriage lies years in the past, but if one looks closely enough, the fissures and fault lines are evident. It is a cracked vase that may shatter at the slightest touch. Or perhaps it has already shattered, and nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact.
Domenico Starnone’s thirteenth work of fiction is a powerful short novel about relationships, family, love, and the ineluctable consequences of one’s actions. Known as a consummate stylist and beloved as a talented storyteller, Domenico Starnone is the winner of Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Strega.

“The leanest, most understated and emotionally powerful novel by Domenico Starnone.”—The New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609453855
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	515,291
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Domenico Starnone  is an Italian writer, screenwriter and journalist. He was born in Naples and lives in Rome. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including First Execution (Europa, 2009), Via Gemito , winner of Italy's most prestigious literary prize, the Strega.

Jhumpa Lahiri is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Interpreter of Maladies. Her books include The Namesake , Unaccustomed Earth , The Lowland , and, most recently, In Other Words , an exploration of language and identity.

Editorial Reviews

…the leanest, most understated and emotionally powerful novel by Domenico Starnone—the least internationally known of Italy's leading novelists…In Ties, no one has the last word. All the different truths are set before us, each given its due, each character fully realized, with the empathy and insight of a gifted novelist. Starnone's prose here is highly skilled without calling attention to itself…Every couple is an enigma to outsiders, and often even to itself. Ties is also about that, about the unspoken mysteries that bind us, that push us away from one another and bring us back.

The New York Times Book Review - Rachel Donadio

01/16/2017
“In case it’s slipped your mind, Dear Sir, let me remind you: I am your wife.” Vanda writes this to her husband, Aldo, who hasn’t come home for six days. It’s Naples, 1974, and Aldo and Vanda married young, and now, when intellectuals have decided that “fidelity is a virtue of the petty bourgeoisie,” they’re stuck. Or she is: Aldo has found love and happiness, and stays gone for four years. We learn that in the second section of the book, its longest, narrated by Aldo after the apartment he and Vanda share has been broken into and trashed, their beloved cat disappeared. Although they reunited decades ago, Vanda and Aldo are still furious, and as he sorts through his demolished possessions, Aldo tells his side of the affair. The problem is that he tells and tells, displaying little self-awareness and seemingly expecting sympathy he may not have earned. Anna, Vanda and Aldo’s daughter, middle-aged and scarred, like her feckless brother, by the breakup and the resumed marriage, is no picnic either—angry, manipulative, greedy. Though Starnone’s willingness to let his characters—particularly Aldo—incriminate themselves can be read as writerly confidence, the novel, despite being slim, feels long. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Ties , named a 2017 New York Times Notable Book

" Ties  is...the leanest, most understated and emotionally powerful novel by Domenico Starnone."
—Rachel Donadio, The New York Times

" Ties is puzzle-like, architectural, a novel ingeniously constructed."
—The New Yorker

" Ties is a masterful study of passing time."
—National Post (Canada)

"[ Ties ] is as vivid and devastating as anything you will read this year. A slim, stunning meditation on marriage, fidelity, honesty, and truth."
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“Scalding and incisive.”
— Library Journal (Starred Review)

“An expertly crafted short novel that is charmingly intimate, disarmingly chatty and laced with some walloping surprises.”
— Shelf Awareness

“An outstanding acheivement.”
—The Sunday Times (UK)

"Ingeniously constructed."
—Financial Times

"Absolutely gripping from start to finish... a really stunning book."
—Victoria Hislop, author of Cartes Postales from Greece

“Each detail resonates, from the name of the family cat to the idiosyncratic way in which Aldo ties his shoes to his cherished Polaroids. Distinguished by its distinctive characters and clarity of tone, Ties is a gem.”
—Jane Ciabattari, BBC

“A complex and devastating dissection of a relationship, superbly teased apart and considered from all possible viewpoints.”
—The Times

“A tight tale of domestic carnage.”
—The Times Literary Supplement

"The story glints and cuts like smashed crystal."
—Anthony Cummins, The Guardian

“A fine piece of story-telling... there is a feel of legerdemain to it—, capturing and conveying a great deal in a relatively small space.”
—M.A. Orthofer, The Complete Review

“Brief, brilliant and unnerving.”
— Margot Livesey, author of  Mercury

“A cleverly crafted psychological thriller, this slim, intimate novel deftly undoes contemporary gender constructions as well as timeless notions of truth, fidelity, and sacrifice.”
—Jennifer Tseng, author of Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

"A superlative novel, Ties offers an x-ray image both of love that is love in name only and of destruction, specifically a home torn apart by something that at first seems to be a tornado but turns out to be Starnone's brilliant writing."
— Il Giornale 

" Ties is a masterfully crafted synthesis of Starnone's storytelling technique and prose style."
—Christian Raimo, Internazionale

" Ties is not simply a novel about a couple in crisis, but a work of literature where staged scenes featuring one's unrealized self are propped up by the indestructible scaffolding of marriage."
—Daniela Brogi, Le Parole e le Cose

"Starnone renders narrative time telescopically as well as microscopically, so that fleeting moments expand and entire decades contract within the same paragraph. [...] And this is the book’s highest achievement: the novelist’s agile handling of time expresses itself in his characters’ agony."
— Public Books

"Starnone captures and dissects a vast array of concerns in a slim volume, neatly structured and tightly plotted, yet at the same time open-ended, without definitive answers or solutions.  Ties , in other words, packs a lot of baggage into a small container while also leaving the container ajar, like Pandora’s box.”
— Asymptote Journal

From the Publisher

★ 12/01/2016
Aside from fine writing and a relentless plot, this portrait of a marriage has lots recommending it. Starnone (First Execution) has claimed Italy's most prestigious literary honor, the Strega Prize; this book won the Bridge Prize, given jointly by the U.S. Embassy in Rome and the Italian Embassy in Washington, DC; and the translator is Pulitzer Prize winner Lahiri. The narrative opens as a cri de coeur from Vanda, abandoned by husband Aldo for a younger woman; leaps several decades to Aldo's reflections on why he left and why he returned four years later; and ends with the couple's adult children venting their spleen. The overly dramatic Vanda claims a need to understand, while the rather spineless Aldo reveals that he could not let go of the exhilaration born of new love, even as he saw he was hurting his family (what a lousy father). And though he cannot relinquish the past, Aldo also can't see himself in the scrawled letters he left from that time. VERDICT A scalding and incisive display of damage done and people missing their mark.

Library Journal

★ 2016-12-15
Four years after leaving his wife and children, Aldo returns to them, ready to rebuild.Starnone's (First Execution, 2009, etc.) latest work begins with a bang: "In case it's slipped your mind, Dear Sir, let me remind you: I am your wife. I know that this once pleased you and that now, suddenly, it chafes." So Vanda writes in a letter to her husband, Aldo, who's left her, and their children, for a younger woman. It's a familiar enough narrative, repeated often enough in Western literature and popular culture to seem clichéd, banal even. But it's Starnone's exquisite artistry that sculpts this story into something much finer. The first portion of the slim book is taken up with Vanda's letters to Aldo, letters sent over the course of the years he is away from home. But the second section skips several decades ahead. Vanda and Aldo are together again. They have been away on holiday and, when they return, find their house ransacked: furniture overturned, glass broken, books and boxes of papers of all sorts scattered everywhere, trampled underfoot. It seems that thieves have been by in their absence. The break-in forces a kind of confrontation between Vanda and Aldo and the past they haven't spoken of in years. Starnone's work is subtle and nuanced, and, in Lahiri's elegant translation, his prose is fluid and clear. It is by no means comprehensive. You will not hear from all sides; you will hear hardly anything from Lidia, Aldo's "other woman," for example. The book is a snapshot, a sliver of a marriage. It is as vivid and devastating as anything you will read this year. A slim, stunning meditation on marriage, fidelity, honesty, and truth.

Kirkus Reviews