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Enchantments, by Linda Ferri

Vintage International, 2006 $12.95

Linda Ferri’s debut novel, Enchantments, is slight but heady, a strong brew composed of a series of simple but striking vignettes, each a vivid snapshot images of a young girl’s life growing up in Tuscany and Paris, resulting in a mythical photo album of the early part of the heroine’s life that ends abruptly as she is unwillingly thrust into adulthood.

Written in Ferri’s native Italian and translated for publication in the States, Enchantments at times seems austere and overly straightforward. However, couched in the uncomplicated text is a candid story of maturation and a detailed look at the girl’s perceptions of life and the relationships that are most important to her—her younger sister; her beautiful American mother, and her handsome, intelligent, jovial and often misunderstood Italian father.

Complex issues of familial love and the multitude of components that comprise womanhood are explored in each short sequence. In an episode devoted to the character’s desire to acquire a new Barbie doll, she rides in the family car en route to the drugstore, animatedly telling her father which doll she hopes to purchase. When he asks why no one wants a Ken doll, she decisively states that she doesn’t like men. The father questions his daughter about the veracity of this claim: “‘Not even your dear old dad?’ ‘Yes Papa,’ I murmur, lowering my head. ‘Yes.’ But I’m not telling the whole truth. Because even though I’m very fond of him, I would like him better if he were a woman.”

Enchantments captures a young girl’s mixed feelings toward her father, the youthful energy, naivety and optimism that infuses the best of childhoods, and finally, in the last pages, the shocking jolt of reality that cuts through the rapture of innocence at a moment when the girl is forced to face the devastating mortality of someone she loves.