From The eight mountainsbrought to the big screen and winner of the Prix Médicis for foreign novels in 2017, the Italian Paolo Cognetti offered us short novels like postcards nestled in the Alps, which make us dream of snow-capped peaks and steep paths. Down in the valley takes us into the same setting that also inspired him The Wolf’s Blisspublished two years ago.
In these places where time seems to stand still, sheltered from the world, Luigi, a forest ranger, is expecting a child with his wife, Elisabetta, a Milanese woman who dropped out of school for this “real” life, made up of pastures and trees cut with axes. It’s been seven years since his brother, Fredo, left for the forests of British Columbia after serving a prison sentence, but Luigi brings him back to the village, despite his reluctance, to buy back his share of the paternal house. While an elusive wolf-dog sows terror in the region, Luigi rediscovers his old demons in the presence of his brother who spends his days drinking until he gets drunk, regretting having come back, until the inevitable happens again.
While shifting the points of view, the author flies over these incomprehensible “gears of destiny” that lead us on sometimes inexplicable paths. With poetry and languor, like a fleeting sensation that recalls the gliding flight of the eagle over the valley.
Down in the valley
Stock
154 pages