Publishers Weekly
★ 01/25/2021
A young man traces his mother’s footsteps toward her tragic end in Bajani’s somber and gripping tale of abandonment and exploitation (after Every Promise). Lorenzo arrives in Bucharest to handle the affairs of his recently deceased mother, Lula, who abandoned him and his stepfather years earlier. Addressed to his mother, Lorenzo’s narration interweaves the tale of his own broken home with revelations about his mother’s demise and insights into decades of oppression under the Ceaușescu regime. At a factory in Bucharest, Lorenzo meets Lula’s former lover, Anselmi, with whom Lula had partnered on a business venture involving a gimmicky weight-loss device. In flashbacks, the reader learns Lula was shunned by her parents, an early betrayal that seems to foretell her later choices. Later, when an adulterous affair results in Lorenzo’s birth, the biological father vanishes. “And so he signed his last name and left it there,” Lorenzo says of that man, “like a lizard leaves its tail and scuttles off somewhere to grow it back.” Here and throughout, family trauma parallels the collective trauma of an oppressed people, with no solace in the past and no real agency in the future. Bajani brings the full weight of his qualities as a poet, journalist, and professor of European Studies to bear, revealing in finely wrought prose the lasting scars of heartbreak on his characters and the body politic. This is deeply affecting. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
"A slim, astonishing book . . . Bajani etches an impressionistic portrait of a young man — like the foreign city outside his window — trapped in a shadow land between past and present." — Anderson Tepper, The New York Times
"[Bajani's] calm, elegant prose stands on its own, defying commentary. Bajani understands how the wounded often remain wounded, cut off from others and themselves. Such is the tragedy of the human story, which is somehow made less tragic by his remarkable ability to illuminate it for us." — Elaine Margolin, Los Angeles Review of Books
"After years of gradually widening distance between them, a man learns some truths about his absent mother when he travels abroad to bury her and settle her business affairs...Bajani’s spare prose delivers startling imagery...as well as quiet reflection as Lorenzo addresses the departed Lula as he moves around her chosen home away from home....Bajani’s lovely, quiet novel lives at the intersection of love and misunderstanding." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
". . . Throughout, family trauma parallels the collective trauma of an oppressed people, with no solace in the past and no real agency in the future. Bajani brings the full weight of his qualities as a poet, journalist, and professor of European Studies to bear, revealing in finely wrought prose the lasting scars of heartbreak on his characters and the body politic. This is deeply affecting." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"When a child is slowly abandoned by a parent, who does he or she grow up to become? Bajani answers the novel’s central question by skipping back and forth in time, weaving together scenes that show us, with devastating clarity, the unraveling of a relationship between a mother and her son, a tapestry of loss woven with quiet power and flawless artistry." – Naheed Patel, Public Books
"Beautifully written, If You Kept a Record of Sins reverberates profoundly with the loneliness of its characters — haunting in the voice of Lorenzo, reaching out to a mother who is no longer — and never really was — there." — M. A. Orthofer, Complete Review
"Subtle and searing, an Italian man called Lorenzo visits the country to attend the funeral of his long-absent mother...The adept, patient style of the novel leaves lots of room for the reader to make their own appraisal of the choices of his mother, Lula, and their impact on the life of the child Lorenzo was and the adult he is now." — Declan O'Driscoll, Irish Times
"How are we remembered? Where do blame and grief meet? . . . Rather than judgement, Bajani’s method is one of lyrical indirection. From resentment to alienation, tenderness to anger, and indifference to joy, Lorenzo’s feelings are never stated outright, instead emerging sideways – from the background noise he doesn’t recognise . . . Bajani’s irresistibly spare narrative tracks our attempts to make sense of and judge one another." — Jessica Payn, the Arts Desk
"Elizabeth Harris has done incredible work in her translation, which in its continually sharp, clipped language reflects the stripped-down nature of the original. These qualities are not only relevant on a linguistic or stylistic level, but also in terms of the novel’s central characters, the hollowed-out voice of Lorenzo, a man who never describes his own emotions, as if he too wanted to be as empty as that infamous egg, an inheritance from his mother." — Brian Robert Moore, Reading in Translation
"This is a story of abandonment that lets fall revelations in delicate, tight prose the way a child might drop pennies into a creek. The ripples are deeply felt." — Bibi Deitz, Coveteur
"This is a novel of alienation – and a great one. Bajani is a master of emotional restraint and stylistic economy, his sparse Italian prose (admirably rendered, in equally sparse English, by Elizabeth Harris) amplifying the novel’s sense of estrangement . . . a book of haunting, unsettling beauty." — Costica Bradatan, the TLS
"The magic of this story lies entirely in the telling—in the delicate balancing of select, sharply depicted images within a spare, measured narrative that simmers with barely restrained emotional tension . . . Reading fiction this well-crafted is a joy." —Joseph Schrieber, Rough Ghosts
"If You Kept a Record of Sins by Andrea Bajani, translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris, is about a man following in the footsteps of a ghost. He’s traveled to Bucharest to bury and settle the affairs of his estranged mother, who left the family over a period of years to make a life around her business in Romania. Holding up his mother’s gradual separation beside the present, Bajani shows that grief is not a thing you move past but move through, and Harris’s translation captures the tenderness and melancholy of the journey."– Adam Levy, Transit Books
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2020-11-27
After years of gradually widening distance between them, a man learns some truths about his absent mother when he travels abroad to bury her and settle her business affairs.
Lula, the enigmatic and estranged daughter of a conventional and well-to-do Italian family, fled Italy for Romania and the opportunity to grow a business in the “Wild West” atmosphere of the post-Ceaușescu years. Left behind with a “Dad” who was not his father—and who is also part of Lula’s collateral damage—Lula’s young son, Lorenzo, grows up with his memories of a loving and playful mother and a growing resignation to her absence. A short (and often surreal) trip to Bucharest to attend Lula’s funeral and unravel aspects of her personal and business affairs provides Lorenzo, as a young man, with subtle clues about the realities of his mother’s life in a country struggling to move forward after years of repression. Bajani’s spare prose delivers startling imagery—Lula’s business manufactures and sells a weight-loss machine that resembles a giant egg, and one of her confederates runs a business which is, essentially, a coffin farm—as well as quiet reflection as Lorenzo addresses the departed Lula as he moves around her chosen home away from home. Lorenzo finds evidence of himself along the trail of Lula’s shattered relationships and works to answer questions about their broken bond through a lens of adult, rather than childlike, understanding. Psalm 130, which lends the novel its title and is awkwardly read at Lula’s funeral, asks “If you kept a record of sins, oh Lord, who could stand before you?” a reminder that there is usually enough fault to go around.
Bajani’s lovely, quiet novel lives at the intersection of love and misunderstanding.
