Angelina's Children (Paperback)

This grim portrait of gypsies won a French literary prize after its 1997 publication. Angelina is only 57, but gypsies age fast. The matriarch has just taken possession of a disused vegetable garden (in an unidentified French town) that will prove to be her last address. She has arrived with her five sons, four daughters-in-law and seven grandchildren. Her husband is dead; caught stealing, he was beaten to a pulp and left to die. With her rotten teeth and distended belly, Angelina is an ugly old crone, yet her complexion, the author notes, is sometimes "golden." Here Ferney wants to have it both ways, portraying Angelina as a gypsy version of Mother Courage who is also stupid and obstinate. Ferney offers an ambivalent portrayal of the sons: They drink, they steal, they fornicate and they're almost completely idle, yet they also have "a magnificent kind of inertia," which renders them "both sublime and infuriating." One bright spot is angelic Esther. Esther is a gadje (non-gypsy), a Jewish nurse turned librarian who shows up out of the blue to read fairy tales to the children; the ragamuffins are good as gold, spellbound. Esther visits every week, although she has a husband and three kids of her own. She manages to get the local school to accept one of the gypsy children, but can't stop City Hall from closing down the encampment. Angelina, who has been throwing their letters into the fire unopened, decides to starve herself to death rather than go through another eviction; she has just enough strength left to deliver a string of homilies before she expires. The gypsies' wretchedness makes for dreary reading, exacerbated by the lack of plot. (Kirkus Reviews)

'Few gypsies want to be seen as poor, although many are. Such was the case with old Angelina's sons, who possessed nothing other than their caravan and their gypsy blood. But it was young blood that coursed through their veins, a dark and vital flow that attracted women and fathered numberless children. And, like their mother, who had known the era of horses and caravans, they spat upon the very thought that they might be pitied.' So begins the story of a tribe exiled to the outskirts of the city, outlawed and ostracized by society. Esther, a young librarian from the town, wants to teach Angelina's grandchildren to read. She runs into a wall of suspicion but eventually manages to tame the children and gain Angelina's confidence. Dealing with the widow's five sons is another matter.

General

Imprint:	Bitter Lemon Press
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	February 2023
First published:	October 2005
Translators:	Emily Read
Authors:	Alice Ferney
Dimensions:	191 x 136 x 17mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	285
ISBN-13:	978-1-904738-10-7
Subtitles:	French
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	1-904738-10-9
Barcode:	9781904738107

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