Book Review: I Give It To You
“Theres something about talking to a writer that makes people so uncomfortable they babble stories in self-defence”
Right, where do I begin with this train wreck of a novel? I’m not saying it’s bad, quite the opposite in fact. But my word! It begins beautifully and seductively before slowing turning into an absolute train crash of circumstances. It is a story that warms you up, but leaves you feeling ice cold by the end of it. Good god, I need more happy books to read! It was probably a bad omen that I read this book right after I finished reading the phenomenal ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ which, focuses on Orwell’s experience of extreme poverty in said cities. This book, ‘I Give it To You’ focuses on the polar opposite, the lives of an aristocratic family in fascist Italy.
Let us begin then with our protagonists Beatrice and Jan, Jan first meets Beatrice at the Villa Chiara outside of Firenze. Beatrice owns the Villa along with her cousins Luca and Mimma. The cousins are odd, the villa is quiet but Beatrice is this striking, tall fashionable Italian academic. I won’t lie, Beatrice makes academia look cool. One night, when Beatrice invites Jan over for dinner she tells Jan the story of her uncle who was shot dead in the drive way of the villa; supposedly caught between the crossfires of the partisans and the fascist fighters during the second world war. Jan is quite taken with the story “I give it to you” is what Beatrice says. This sentiment would prove fatal in the end.
Jan goes through the novel writing her own stories all of which Beatrice reads. Their friendship is sporadic, they meet every few years, and in those ensuing years more and more of Beatrice’s story comes to light. She married an American she met whilst at Boston College before divorcing him not long after their tumultuous trip to Italy. It turns out that her uncle Sandro was abused by his father and sent to an asylum, her other Uncle- Marco was a devout Italian Fascist who believed, truly believed that they would win. Spoiler alert, they didn’t. Marco squandered the family fortune so much so that the family were forced to sell their beloved palazzo that had been in the family for almost 500 years. It seemed that the world was coming for the aristocracy, and Beatrice was unbeknownst to it all. Jan saw it coming. She saw it in the faces of those who worked at the Villa Chiara, she saw the way Beppe, their handy man, slowly seduced the poor Mimma so that she adopted him as her son. Mimma was to die a little while later, of neglect. To be honest, that made me furious, it left a bitter taste in my mouth to think that someone could get away with such a devilish thing as that. For some reason it hurt me more that the treatment of Sandro, being abandoned to live in an asylum by his father and then Marco. Which was horrific because it was such a waste of a life.
With writing there comes a certain romanticism and I was delighted when the writer, Valerie Martin quotes the stunning ‘A Room With A View’ by E. M. Forster, which was one of my favourite books of 2020 (click here to read the review I wrote). But the problem with romanticism is that is can blur the lines of reality, you can only look at the world through rose coloured glass for so long. I earlier mentioned that ‘I give it to you’ would prove fatal, and indeed it turned out to be. Jan wrote a novel, a beautiful novel, she thought, about the Villa Chiara (although she changed the name and put the setting away from Florence) and the death of Sandro. What Jan wrote was fiction however, when Beatrice read the novel she was broken hearted. She could not believe that after all these years of friendship Jan would betray her trust in such a way. A story that had been a private family matter and, according to Beatrice, ancient history was turned in to a farce-one that included fratricide. The letter from Beatrice surprised Jan, for she meant no harm, only to write fiction. The book turns meta at this moment ‘Beatrice signed the letter with her real name’ suggesting that this book in and of itself is real and that ‘Beatrice’ was a real person but her name had been changed for the purpose of this novel.
This novel, should you wish to read it, is a stunning book. It will break your heart. It is an honest look at the line between authorship and ownership of a story based on real events. Write what you know, but make it fiction