Like John Hersey’s Pulitzer-Prize winning A Bell for Adano, Goliarda Sapienza’s new novel, Meeting in Positano, situates readers in an Italian village in the mid-20th century. In his book, Hersey changed the name of the Sicilian village of Licata to Adano. Sapienza’s Positano is the actual, seductive, cliffside village located on the Amalfi Coast. Like Hersey – who was a reporter for Time and Life in Italy during WWII — Sapienza is familiar with her setting. She was an actress who traveled to Positano in the early 1950s to film a documentary and to scout sites for a movie. Meeting in Positano — translated by Brian Robert Moore (winner of the 2021 PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature) — is a departure for Sapienza, whose massive 700-page The Art of Joy entertained and challenged readers. The Art of Joy is a feminist, erotic, coming-of-age text that took her 10 years to write. It was rejected by publishers for 20 years before her husband orchestrated the publishing of 1,000 copies in Italy soon after Sapienza’s death in 1996. The Art of Joy was admired throughout Europe in the late 1990s before it was released broadly in 2013. One thing that stayed the same in Meeting in Positano is Sapienza’s lyrical and imaginative prose, displayed in her admiration of Positano:
“Through the wide-opened window, in an aquatic light, I see one of the many slopes of Positano rising steeply just two meters in front of me. It’s a persistent pink, even in that funerary chapel half-light. The openings in the mountain (or the wounds …) are still visible, and as I look up, it takes the full extension and flexibility of my neck to glimpse a strip of faded blue sky above.”
Meeting in Positano is a work of autofiction focusing on Goliarda and the beautiful Erica Beneventano – known to residents as “The Princess.” Erica, the middle of the three Beneventano sisters, is based on someone Goliarda had encountered. Sapienza uses the tranquility of Positano “where people never grow old … like in Shangri-La” as a complementary backdrop for Erica’s physical beauty:
“Everyone was held spellbound as she walked down the steps to the dock where a skiff waited for her to push out to sea. Or when upon her return … [locals] with admiring eyes followed her steps on the carpet of wooden planks which made a snug living room of the ancient, rocky bay. That kind of woman is born only once every hundred years.”
Sapienza ’s mother signed her up for theater classes in Rome when she was sixteen. After this early training, she worked with Visconti, Pasolini, and Maselli, with whom she was in love. Her cinematic orientation is evident in Meeting in Positano in which her prose flows by way of cerebral leaping combined with aptly observed natural detail. There are moments of interior dialogue, in which she generates a camera eye effect — a technique that assists the reader to imagine a scene in frames, like a film or a polaroid. The two first-person narrations form an intimate mood placing the reader with Erica and Goliarda in Erica’s villa as they reveal their secrets, and as they glide down the stairs of Positano in the midday sun – and as they confide in each other in a cliffside café. They speak intimately about suicide, Erica’s depression, abortion, Erica’s first marriage, and Erica’s past. We also learn how Erica’s father lost the family fortune, and they get acquainted with Erica’s sisters, Olivia and Fiore. Through it all, Goliarda remains a loyal friend. The reason, perhaps, may be found in Sapienza’s familiarity with mental illness, which she has written about with intensity. She struggled with depression and alcohol abuse and attempted suicide numerous times. She underwent electroshock therapy to quell her demons, and she saw a therapist for years. Her psychoanalyst terminated treatment when Sapienza declared her love for him.
Because relations in Sapienza’s Positano are so closely knit, she is especially intent on portraying the uniqueness of its characters. In describing Erica’s live-in helper, she writes, “When I met Nunziatina, she — like almost everyone else in the town, for that matter — was so poor, she couldn’t even afford a pair of shoes, and so I took her in to work for me.” By the end of the novel, the reader shares the atmosphere of Erica and Nunziatina’s love — as well as the ongoing tension between Erica and her lover, Riccardo: “Was it Riccardo who drove you to feel so disillusioned, Erica?” And the presence of the avuncular café owner, Giacomino, provides emotional cover for the girls.
Meeting in Positano appeals strongly to one’s sentiments, but the affection between Erica and Goliarda opens up to the gratifications of a complex world. Like Hersey’s A Bell for Adano, which debuted in 1945, Meeting in Positano befits a life on celluloid. Perhaps Penelope Cruz will play Goliarda and Naomi Watts will take on Erica’s role, leaving room for Rami Malek to play Riccardo.
[Published by Other Press on May 11, 2021, 256 pages, $15.99 paperback]