{"id":532331,"date":"2026-05-02T10:29:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T08:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=532331"},"modified":"2026-05-02T10:29:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T08:29:48","slug":"uvaspina-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/literature\/uvaspina-review\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00abUvaspina: grabbing the devil by the horns"},"content":{"rendered":"

With\u00a0Uvaspina<\/em>, Monica Acito grabs hold of literature with hands full of the sacred fire of blinded myths, to deliver a blistering novel in which Naples becomes the scene of carnal violence, carried by a harsh, vindictive language.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

After months of lukewarm reading, what a relief it is to hold a book in your hands that tells you \u00abthis is literature\u00bb! Because good literature jumps out at you like a parcel bomb. Uvaspina<\/em> is not a novel that transports you; it rolls off your back. From these pages pours a tenacious, almost mythological violence, a telluric storm that smashes beings against each other, until the last bonds are broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Folklore of fratricidal love<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The story of\u2019Uvaspina<\/em> is as age-old as superstition, as fatal as legend. We follow the life of a boy in Neapolitan working-class neighborhoods, where tenderness circulates poorly and bodies often speak louder than words. Uvaspina tries to grow up in a family that the wrath of sad passions is breaking up, between the evil clutches of his furious sister Minuccia and the funeral comedy of his mother Graziella, known as La D\u00e9pareill\u00e9e, a sort of still life with a boisterous gobble who can no longer bear the neglect of her husband, who has squandered his fortune and his name on sexual orgies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On these sidewalks burning with misery, childhood is already an anxiety, adolescence a slow deflagration. It's in this sticky atmosphere, in the heart of these foul-smelling urban swamps, that Uvaspina searches for himself between the identities that clash. And he tries to muzzle betrayal in the fury of first love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read also | The last summer in town<\/em>, the exhilaration of la dolce vita<\/a><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

The banner announces a new Elena Ferrante; it's nothing of the sort, except that the book is about Naples. Any other comparison is misleading: Monica Acito's Naples is a territory free of concessions, where the violence of the world rivals that of men. It's a supernatural, decadent Naples that seems to bend under the weight of its beliefs and demons. Here, we're more at the crossroads of Elsa Morante and Pier Paolo Pasolini, for the social violence, dented childhood and extreme emotional intensity that lie beneath the sacred mire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00abThe time of a rustle, and the sky opened, torn by a lightning bolt in the shape of a hinge, that between childhood and adulthood.\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Without ever withering or festering, Monica Acito's language is virulent, snarling, raw, almost vulgar at times, but as soon as it's trampled underfoot, it flies skyward to pick up the stardust, in dazzling lyricism. It's a language with blood on its teeth and velvet in its throat. She is a tragic assassin. Naples, like its inhabitants, appears not in any ordinary light, but in hallucinatory dreams, on the fringes of vast madness bordered by the Styx. And it's precisely this blend of poetry feigned with vulgarity, of beauty disguised with disgust, that makes her writing so disturbing: she doesn't sublimate reality, she sucks the marrow out of it to project onto tombstones the shadows of \u00e9frits dancing among the inferno.<\/p>\n\n\n\n