Inocencia

Por Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald, autora de La librería y El inicio de la primavera, vuelve con una novela inteligentísima y tremendamente seductora, que nos recuerda a una comedia de Shakespeare y que crea un universo real y completo, casi tangible, en el que es posible encontrar un auténtico prodigio tras cada esquina.La joven Chiara Ridolfi acaba de salir del colegio inglés en el que ha pasado su infancia. Al llegar a Florencia, donde viven su padre y su tía, descendientes de una antigua familia de nobles italianos ahora venida a menos, se enamora perdidamente del doctor Salvatore Rossi, un hombre recio, hecho a sí mismo y con una inmensa conciencia de clase. Pero a partir de su primer encuentro, en un concierto para violín de Brahms, el mundo parece confabularse para que sientan que todo se interpone en su camino. El carácter de ambos, insegura ella e inflexible él, ayuda a hacer de su vida algo insoportable. Hasta que alguien decide adoptar una medida sorprendente y extrema, fruto de una peculiaridad ancestral del temperamento familiar.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: Impedimenta
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 31 mar 2014
• ISBN: 9788415979210

Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald, de soltera Knox, nació en 1916. Fue hija del editor de Punch, Edmund Knox, y sobrina del teólogo y novelista Ronald Knox, del criptógrafo Dilly Knox y del estudioso de la Biblia Wilfred Knox. En Impedimenta han aparecido sus novelas La librería (1978; Impedimenta, 2010), A la deriva (1979; Impedimenta, 2018), Voces humanas (1980; Impedimenta, 2019), La escuela de Freddie (1982; Impedimenta, 2022), Inocencia (1986; Impedimenta, 2013), El inicio de la primavera (1988; Impedimenta, 2011), La puerta de los ángeles (1990; Impedimenta, 2015), La flor azul (1995, Impedimenta, 2014) y El niño de oro (1977; Impedimenta, 2024).

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Comentarios para Inocencia

[soylentgreen23 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

My first introduction to Penelope Fitzgerald's work had come with 'The Bookshop', and with this second helping I feel like I'm on the road to becoming a big fan. Her writing never calls attention to herself, and yet it is some of the most penetrative, striking prose I've ever seen. In 'Innocence' this characteristic voice carries the reader through what is not the most incredible plot to have ever graced literature, and yet you don't mind the otherwise pedestrian story simply thanks to the joy of reading each sumptuous paragraph. I've got more Fitzgeralds on my bookshelf, and I'm eager to move on to the next.

[junipersun · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Read for a book club. Very boring litany of misunderstandings, assumptions, minor complaints raised to major calamities in the imagination. 1950's impoverished genteel Italian family, daughter schooled in England falls in love with a doctor & gets married. A lot of unhappiness on the part of all.

[qofd · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

This is the third and last book by Fitzgerald I will read. I just don't like what she writes about and how she writes it. Each book is a struggle. Just not my style.

[pensivecat · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I don't get it. Am I missing something here? At first I thought i was a cute, quirky story about an old Italian family whose half-Anglo daughter meets an Italian doctor and gets married. But there is no clear reason why they fall in love, or how their relationship builds or even gets rather stormy. Occasionally a bit of humor sneaks into a sentence, and to catch it you really need to pay attention. An English friend, Barney (a girl), is sort of fun, but even her actions don't make any sense. The climax in the end seemed rather dramatic, then fell flat. So there were moments, but not enough.

[elizabethpisani_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

The first Penelope Fitzgerald I ever read. I went on to read everything she has written. Which tells you something.

[randymetcalfe · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

In mid-50s Florence, the Ridolfi family is both an historical sport of nature and precious stock that needs grafting to the deep roots of political consciousness that will herald the future. The count and his daughter are both of the world but also strangely absent. However, when the teenage Chiara falls head over heels for Dr Salvatore Rossi while standing in the rain during the intermission at a concert, she sets in train a sequence of events that will eventuate in romantic bliss or disaster. Meanwhile, Salvatore, who as a child met the dying marxist Antonio Gramsci, is as perplexed as he is smitten by both Chiara and her famous family. He is driven to distraction, which is not a comfortable state for a psychiatrist. How can he go on? How can he not? It is, as ever, the unanswerable question.Fitzgerald’s prose here is both delicate, almost fastidious, and gaudy. The humour, when it arrives (and it comes often and in droves) is beyond farcical. Yet there is such a sweetness about Chiara, the disturbed Salvatore, and Chiara’s blundering English friend, Barney, that you can’t help falling in love with all of them. The fact that the novel doesn’t really go anywhere makes it hardly any different than life itself. And Fitzgerald clearly sees both the muddle and the majesty of life.The wandering style and the Italian families might be confusing at first, but this is a novel with as much evidence of Penelope Fitzgerald’s mastery as any in her oeuvre. Recommended, as ever.

[michaelm42071 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

A stormy love affair starts between a twenty-nine year old doctor, Salvatore Rossi, and Chiara Ridolfi, just out of school and nineteen. He comes from a poor rural family in the south and his father worshipped Antonio Gramsci, whom Salvatore saw dying when the boy was ten. Chiara comes from an old aristocratic family of decaying fortunes; they have a villa, the Ricordanza, a farm at Valsassina which now produces a little wine for sale, and a palazzo in Florence. The Ricordanza is named after the verse in Dante where Francesca asks whether memory in her situation is the worst misery in hell or a small consolation. Chiara’s school friend, the formidable Barney (Lavinia Barnes) comes to help. Complicating rather than helping are Chiara’s gentle, retiring father, Count Giancarlo Ridolfi, his sister Maddalena, and his nephew Cesare, who runs the farm. Chiara and Salvatore marry, but his bristliness and Chiara’s direct, unswerving honesty make for continued friction, which becomes public in a funny scene at a villa party given by a family friend, Professor Pulci. One of Fitzgerald’s themes is the irrational manner in which those who love each other can get into and sustain arguments. Another is the notion of children recognizing that in a particular situation they are older than their parents. Something she repeats here is the way deception becomes easier with practice. And as always, we wonder how she knows so much about Italian farming, Gramsci, and various other arcane matters.