A Very Cold Winter

In this overdue translation of Cialente’s vital 1966 novel, her first to be published in English, a family struggles to find harmony while crammed together in a frigid Milan squat. The narrative opens in 1946 in the shadow of the “ashen specter of the long, fierce winter.” Camilla, whose husband abandoned the family before the war, rules with an iron fist over the attic squat she shares with their three children: Alba, a young woman of “dangerous beauty”; aspiring writer Lalla; and cinephile Guido. Also living with them are members of the extended family, including a widowed new mother. The attic is a character in its own right, a far from up to code living space divided by makeshift partitions that nonetheless possesses a ramshackle charm. When Alba strikes out to pursue a life of “luxury,” the decision and its aftermath risk breaking Camilla, who’s still gutted by her husband’s desertion and her realization that the war seemed only to tear the country apart: “She truly believed that misfortune and suffering, the absolute void that death brought with it, would create a deeper unity among people, a lasting warmth.” Cialente, who died in 1994, exhibits the mastery aspired to by the budding writer Lalla, who yearns to hone a style that is “spare, razor-sharp, never pandering.” The result is an exquisite chronicle of frozen hearts and their gradual thaw. (Jan.)