[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_07

The children’s train, Viola Ardone, 2019

For me, seeing a child on the cover of a book or reading some reference to

childhood in the title represents a sufficient element to discourage the

purchase of the book.

However, the book was given to me as a gift in this case. I didn't know whether to be happy: “The Children's Train” sounded like yet another cloying Italian melodrama about the hunger and passion of mothers in the 1950s. And at least on one part, I wasn't wrong: in Italy, people resort to the past to talk about many things that are wrong in the present; the post-war period is usually a somewhat functional set for staging current contradictions and injustices, think of Paola Cortellesi's film "There's Still Tomorrow."

Viola Ardone's book brings to mind a forgotten historical case: the deportation

of children from the poor and backward South of Italy to economically prosperous families in the North. The story is built from the gaze of one of the children, Amerigo, and grows together with him. What emerges is not only the short-sightedness of the communist party, the practical limits of the "great ideals," and the betrayal of many hopes, but also the complexity of bonds, the difficulty of giving affection if one has not received it, the profound division between the family one has and the family one would like, loving and hating those who brought us into the world.

There are no judgments but events and emotions that develop over time into

increasingly layered feelings. There is no reference to the intense racism that

has distanced the South, which has remained poor, even further from the North,

which feels better. There is no direct political criticism because the political

history mentioned in the book speaks for itself very well. “The boy was in love and wanted to marry her after the end of the war. But he was a couple of years younger than her. And those in the communist party didn't want it. Rosa says that comrades are sometimes worse than the village wives. They only talk about freedom but don't want to give it. Especially to females."