by Viola Ardone
The train transporting poor southern kids immediately after the war to the plentiful and generous north literally “translates” them to a different reality. The dichotomy within Amerigo is compounded by his adoption: a new beginning, a new family, a new name, but at the same time an irreparable break with his past. Amerigo only realizes when he returns to Naples as an adult that the sounds of the city, especially the crowded alleyways of the Spanish Quarter where he grew up, have haunted him all his life–and overwhelm him on his return. The streets of Naples are ringing with music but Amerigo can only become a musician once he has left. “You can’t eat music,” his mother once reminded him. He is forced literally to swallow his talent in exchange for her love, which only reveals itself after her death when he tastes her leftover pasta alla genovese.
Ardone writes what can only be called a musical score for Naples, with the rising and falling cadences of the street conversations, market calls, or stress patterns of dialect which are represented on the page with marked divisions into syllables. Songs play an important role, too, and often symbolize a rupture. Amerigo dreads hearing the lullaby of his childhood, which tells the story of a baby being given away to a uomo nero (literally “black man,” an atavistic “other”), and is relieved when his new mother, who has no experience of children, sings him the communist hymn, “Bella Ciao.” An Italian will have known both songs intimately since childhood. At the same time, they will never have thought of the lullaby as menacing, just as we don’t think of “Rock-a-bye Baby” falling out of the treetops as being scary.
It is the constant shift of perception from the familiar—linguistically and culturally—to the shadowy realm of the unfamiliar that makes Amerigo such an appealing character, both as a child and as an adult. Paradoxically, this allows readers in translation to follow the same dual trajectory, “carrying across” their own new meaning, hand in hand with Amerigo, crossing their fingers all the while, hoping against hope that he will make it to the other side.
—Clarissa Botsford
Here ends Viola Ardone’s
The Children’s Train.
The first edition of this book was printed and bound at LSC Communications in Harrisonburg, Virginia, October 2020.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
The text of this novel was set in ITC Legacy Serif, a typeface designed by Ronald Arnholm in the early 1990s. Arnholm, then a graduate student at Yale, drew inspiration from Nicolas Jenson’s (1420–1480) early Roman typefaces. ITC Legacy maintains the beauty and elegance of Jenson’s original, while improving legibility with its open counters and clean character shapes.
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About the Author
VIOLA ARDONE was born in Naples in 1974. She holds a degree in literature and has worked in academic publishing. She is the author of two other novels, Le ricette del cuore in subbuglio published in 2013 and Una rivoluzione sentimentale in 2016. Ardone currently lives in Naples and is a high school Latin and Italian teacher.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE CHILDREN’S TRAIN. Copyright © 2021 by Viola Ardone. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design: KAITLIN KALL
Cover photographs © MARK OWEN/TREVILLION IMAGES (boy): © KONDOR83/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES (mountains): © KATSUMI MUROUCHI/GETTY IMAGES (texture)
Originally published as Il treno dei bambini in Italy in 2019 by Einaudi
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition JANUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-294052-0
Version 12092020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-294050-6 (Hardcover)
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-307250-3 (Intl)
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-307824-6 (ANZ)
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