I'm new to Donatella and have not read her earlier books, but I was curious to see where The Brittle Age would take me. The setup had a lot of potential — a past crime, a remote setting, and a strained mother-daughter relationship layered over everything. But in the end, it didn’t fully land for me.

The writing is strong and atmospheric, and I appreciated the themes around memory, trauma, and the long echo of violence. The sections set in the past were the most engaging, and I actually think the murder mystery alone could have carried the story. The present-day storyline, especially the pandemic backdrop and the family land conflict, felt a bit underdeveloped in comparison and didn’t hold my attention in the same way-

Still, there are moments that stood out and lines that hit hard. I can see what the book was aiming for, even if it didn’t quite get there for me personally.

I loved Donatella’s previous books and I respect what she was aiming for with ‘The Brittle Age’ but I don’t think it quite worked. I was very intrigued by the murder mystery and I think that was enough of a story in and of itself to captivate readers. The overlay of the mother-daughter relationship in the future and the conflict over a piece of land didn’t do it for me and I found myself a bit bored by those aspects of the story. Her writing itself was still excellent and the translation seemed very well done.

As I become more and more interested in translated lit, I’ve found myself paying closer attention to the literary prizes in various countries/languages realizing that when books win prizes in the language they’ve been written in, there’s a good chance that translations will be on the way giving the book a second life with a new audience. So, when I Europa shared that author Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s The Brittle Age had won the Strega Prize in Italy and that an English translation would be forthcoming, I took note, and waited.

The Brittle Age did not disappoint.

A short read (it took me just two days), The Brittle Age explores the long shadows cast by a case involving sexual assault and femicide many years earlier and the path towards healing.

It is, as you might imagine, a sobering read but it’s also utterly compelling. Set in a mountainous rural part of Italy, The Brittle Age recounts the story of the disappearance of a couple of young women while camping. Alongside this, we learn of how, after years of trying to forget about it, time eventually means it must be confronted again when Lucia’s father gives her the property where it happened. The past is now hers to deal with.

In just a few pages, Di Pietrantonio encourages readers to see that while we may want to think that violence against women is a story from the past, it very much still exists today. Indeed, the germ of the story was based on a real event. She weaves in lots of contrasts (urban-rural, male-female, generations) to deepen our understanding of gender-based violence and to highlight how now, as then, women’s safety in the world is not guaranteed.

With great writing/translation, The Brittle Age is a powerful read, evocative of both time and place, and one which explores both the problem and a way through.

𝐈𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐚 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐞, 𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝. 𝐈 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞, 𝐈 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠.

This novel is inspired by true events. The year the narrator, Lucia, was twenty years old her world was fractured by the vicious murders of two young women at Dente del Lupo, a campsite in the Maiella mountains of Central Italy run by her best friend Doralice’s parents, on land owned by her own family. More disturbing is that a third has survived, and it is Doralice left wounded, bloodied and in shock. It is as if a curse is born that night, changing the once happy place of their childhood forever. It, just like the people in the valley, is never the same. It becomes as silent and haunted as the locals by the savagery of that August night. Doralice and Lucia’s childhood bond does not survive the nightmare, and the Sherriff (Doralice’s mother) keeps people away, especially the hungry reporters. As the last tents are folded up, so too are the memories tied to the past, and what Lucia felt was her small betrayal.

Decades later Lucia is separated from her husband, her father is aging and struggling with health woes, and now her rebellious daughter is back when the pandemic forces the closure of her university in Milan. Her daughter isn’t communicating with her, barely seems to want to get out of bed nor bathe. The only thing that has stoked Amanda’s curiosity is Dente del Lupo, their ancient family property, named “Wolf’s tooth” for its shape, like that of a canine. It is the inheritance Lucia doesn’t want, a burden, one she thought her father had sold. She is losing her daughter, she doesn’t know about her personal life, and an experience that left her rattled troubles Amanda more than she let on. Lucia is afraid that her daughter’s life will stall out much the same as her own did. That one day she will be the woman swallowed by regrets, stewing in her own failures. It is a fragile time, a fragile transformative age and while for Lucia horror disrupted her trajectory, her daughter is facing her own obstacle as well, at the same age.

This story is an eye inside the damage of a crime that marked not just one family but the entire community. It exposes how traumatic events change us, infecting the ways we interact with those closest to us, especially our family. Even family that haven’t yet been born. Is there hope for new beginnings, can the land heal if it can’t forget, what about people? What came off as one of the most genuine interactions is the cowardice Lucia felt after her friend nearly lost her life. Grief, fear, death- the emotions that shake us to the core often leave us mute, unable to confront the moment. It is a heavy tale and while the murders are the hook, for me the feelings Lucia tries to navigate through the fraught relationship with her daughter is the real story.

Publication Date: June 3, 2025 Available Today

Europa Editions

Another novel that is structured around a cataclysmic event, revealed in shreds, interweaving past and present. Is this a fashionable structure? Personally, I find it inadequate. Surely there needs to be more - not just a then and now but a next as well.
This one is reasonably subtly done, with the landscape and the characters nicely drawn. But it still falls short. No great force in the horrible central act. No great emotion in the relationships. I read dutifully rather with great engagement.

This book is beautifully atmospheric. The summary makes it sound like its about a crime, and a part of it is, but I found the setting and relationships between parent and child to be much more interesting.

Although there is a serious crime at the heart of this novel it is not a crime fiction - rather a slow paced, introspective piece of Italian literature.

A Brittle Age reveals the lingering impacts of past trauma on a community from the perspective of middle aged Lucia, someone close to the victim, who was not there for them when they needed her. There is also a contemporary mother-daughter relationship, scarred by a similar circumstances, between Lucia and her daughter, a young woman seemingly adrift from life.

There are many beautifully observed details of the fragility of life and relationships seamlessly translated by Ann Goldstein the acclaimed translator of Ellena Ferrante.

My thanks to Europa Editions and Netgalley for an advance review copy.

this was fine. i usually struggle with pandemic narratives and this relied heavily on the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. the mystery itself never really had me on the edge of my seat, though, which was what i had expected from a book like this — so i ended up feeling a little dissatisfied, i suppose.

this book was okay, but could have been better. I do love a good mother daughter story and seeing their growth, their downfalls, and love and guilt and emotions are great. This book was still a bit hard to get through. there were too many dull moments and made it difficult to read at points

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

there is so much that i appreciated about this book, especially as a parent to a young child. donatella through lucia’s character as well as rubina’s, has managed to capture the pain of a child growing up and away from a parent. her conversation with rubina in which rubina reflects on the fact that she may only see her son so many times again in her life hit me in my heart. not only because it’s painful to imagine this separation that we know will inevitably come, yet we resist believing will come. but also because it’s painful to imagine this separation occurring due to an unanticipated new character in your child’s life (i.e. a lover, an assaulter, a move away to a city, etc.)

i was so hopeful as this book began, as i loved the writing and the ideas. unfortunately i found myself disappointed by how confusing it was, particularly after the first few chapters when she starts mixing in reflections on her daughter in the present, apparent memories of her daughter a few years back, then suddenly we are at her choir class that we didn’t know she was in, then she is reflecting on a little girl struggling to walk and we can’t tell if it’s a memory of her daughter? then it seems she’s somehow a physical therapist or something? the point being it’s too often unclear who or when we are talking about.

potentially this is a result of a poorly executed translation, though i find ann goldstein to be such an incredible translator so that feels unlikely.

having said all this, i did not find many reviews addressing this particular issue that i experienced so perhaps this was merely my distracted life that caused me to miss details.

my only other observation was that indeed as many of the reviews acknowledge there is a bit of a elena ferrante narrative underpinning all of donatella’s books (among others) and while i love this when it works, it can lead one to expect a particular level of clarity in plot/character development that elena is so capable of. elena’’s ability to specify the character’s name so often could be seen as tiresome to a new reader of her work but after reading books like this one, you realize how crucial that is to understanding where we are at in a story and who is involved.

again i am mostly dissapointed as i truly love what this book is touching in, it feels incredibly real and relatable and it’s wonderful to have these ideas explored by women who are such talented writers and thinkers, like donatella clearly is. i perhaps just wish her editors had helped her clarify the story she was trying to explore a bit more..

Set in the rugged landscape of Central Italy’s Maiella mountains, The Brittle Age follows Lucia—a physiotherapist navigating a separation and adjusting to life with her daughter Amanda, who’s returned home from Milan during the pandemic. When Amanda’s return stirs up memories of a brutal double murder and attempted third, of which Lucia’s friend was the only survivor decades earlier, the novel weaves a quiet exploration of trauma, motherhood, and the shadows of a violent past. Inspired by real events, it aims to reflect on the way personal and collective histories imprint themselves on individual lives.

There are parts of this novel that I really did appreciate. The writing is smooth and accessible, and the shifting timeline—particularly the way it touches on past events—adds an emotional undercurrent that occasionally sparked something deeper. The most powerful element, for me, was the portrayal of the mother-daughter dynamic. Reading from the perspective of a mother reckoning with her past, her decisions, and her own daughter’s pain was unexpectedly moving. As someone who gave my parents a hard time growing up, this perspective made me reflect on things I hadn’t considered before.

But despite the emotional potential, the overall execution didn’t quite work for me. The pacing was a real struggle—the first half felt overly drawn out, often repetitive, and too heavy with introspection without enough narrative movement to balance it. And then, when the novel finally delves into the past and the crime that defined Lucia’s youth, it sped up so quickly that the emotional and thematic depth I’d been hoping for got lost in the rush. I admire quiet, character-driven stories (I do love the Neapolitan series, after all), but this one felt like it lingered too long where it didn’t need to—and rushed where it truly mattered.

I admire what the author was trying to do here, and I think readers who love slow-burning, meditative portraits of motherhood and mortality may connect with it more than I did. But I personally wanted more exploration, more emotional growth, and a more even narrative rhythm to anchor me in the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Europa Editions for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.