First Execution - Domenico Starnone

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First Execution

by
Domenico Starnone

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	First Execution
Author:	Domenico Starnone
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2007 (Eng. 2009)
Length:	173 pages
Original in:	Italian
Availability:	First Execution - US
	First Execution - UK
	First Execution - Canada
	Prima esecuzione - Italia

Italian title: Prima esecuzione
Translated by Antony Shugaar

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Our Assessment:

B : a few twists too many, but fairly clever

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Il Giornale	.	6/11/2007	Fabrizio Ottaviani

From the Reviews:

"Da parte nostra ci è sembrato che con tutti i suoi doppi fondi, cul de sac e improvvise contromarce Prima esecuzione sia un romanzo riuscito, quasi esemplare nel suo costringere un personaggio scisso a risolversi. A colpire, in particolare, è la maestria con cui Starnone si serve della pagina come di un prisma attraverso il quale un singolo problema viene diffratto lungo tutto lo spettro della realtà umana, dalle pulsioni distruttive più ferine alla riflessione giuridica più astratta, passando per il piano familiare e quello professionale." - Fabrizio Ottaviani, Il Giornale

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       First Execution begins as a straightforward thriller. Nina, a former student of retired literature teacher Domenico Stasi, was arrested, the politically active woman accused of armed conspiracy. When she is released she wants to meet with her former teacher, and she asks him for a favour -- "to do what being arrested kept me from doing."
       Stasi feels a certain sense of responsibility -- "To educate is a powerful, positive action, it establishes a bond that cannot be dissolved" -- and he agrees: he goes to the apartment of a friend of hers, where there is a message hidden in a book he is meant to retrieve.
       Three chapters and barely more than a dozen pages in the first-person narrative shifts abruptly: rather than Stasi recounting the story the author pops up, full of doubt about what he has written and how to proceed. He does reveal that: "I was constructing the story the way I usually do, reinventing my experience", and describes how he came to this story. And over the rest of the novel he repeatedly interjects himself and describes the writing-process and the reasons behind his choices. Not only that, he also revises the text, changing some of the details and some of what occurs as he proceeds.
       Stasi is drawn deeper into the conspiracy, receiving a package containing a gun, for example. And the author tosses another former student into the mix, Sellitto, who is on the police force investigating the new Red Brigades.
       Both former students were influenced by Stasi's teachings -- and, for example, his passion about injustice. Sellitto recalls: "You were capable of showing us injustice in just about anything, even things you'd never normally think about." And Sellitto and Nina now both fight against injustice, albeit in very different ways.
       Violence, and the threat of violence, bubbles under the surface of much of this. When Sellitto mentions Stasi railing against injustice he also notes how mad the teacher would get, creating a tension in the classroom. But Stasi has also retreated from at least part of his once firmly held position:

When I was young, I thought that violence was a curtain to be drawn with a necessary gesture, unemotionally, as a way of letting in a little light. Now it terrifies me.

But the author pushes him towards an act of violence. And the author also mentions an incident of losing control himself: angry at how one bus passenger treated another he found himself lashing out, suddenly: "a furious, disembodied demon". It is also an action that will have consequences; it also colours how the book proceeds.
The puppet-master pushes Stasi towards action:

To finally excavate Stasi from decades of words. Make him experience the burden, the responsibility, the delirium of doing.

It's a few fairly clever twists that lead author and Stasi there, but it's also a lot for the book to sustain. Starnone pulls it off well enough, but it's not quite as neat a trick as it might have been. Stil, it make for an interesting meditation on violence, political action, and, above all else, words -- especially about morality and ethics (i.e.how easy it is to denounce injustice, but how hard it is to act against it).
The metafictional play is handled quite well -- though presumably works better in an environment where Starnone's works are more familiar (the author in the book clearly is Starnone and he mentions a number of his projects; there are also cameos by writers Alessandro Baricco and Sandro Veronesi). An interesting if not entirely satisfying read.

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Links:

First Execution:

Europa editions publicity page
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore publicity page

Reviews:

Other books by Domenico Starnone under review:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Italian literature

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About the Author:

Italian author Domenico Starnone was born in 1943.

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