SUSANNA Tamaro’s Answer Me is one long monologue with rare conversational interventions. Deemed an international bestseller in the making, I must confess I can see neither its appeal nor its potential. Perhaps having unsympathetic characters dominating the whole book doesn’t help matters.
Answer Me is made of three linked novellas set in Tamaro’s native Italy. All three explore similar themes and ideas, such as religion and faith, damnation and salvation and the quest for love.
In ‘Answer Me’, the title story of the book, an orphaned girl with a troubled past desperately searches for love but keeps getting it wrong. In ‘No Such Thing as Hell’, an abused wife attempts to protect her two children from her abusive husband but fails miserably. And in ‘The Burning Wood’, a widower recounts the failures of his marriage and seeks the forgiveness of his estranged daughter.
Funnily enough, Ippolita Avalli, an acclaimed Italian novelist and former friend of Tamaro, is suing the author for plagiarism. Avalli claims that the plot, structure and vocabulary of her autobiographical 1997 novel The Goddess of Kisses were ripped off in the title story of ‘Answer Me’. There are apparently 35 points of similarity between the two works, and Avalli is seeking £1.7 million in damages and wants Tamaro’s book removed from the shelves. Tamaro has retaliated with a £1 million counter-claim. It’s anyone’s guess why either of them would claim the rights to intellectual work as poor as this, but there you go.
It’s not that the writing itself is bad; it’s just that the essence of it fails to reach out and convince the reader. It’s too explanatory, almost as if Tamaro is undermining the reader’s intelligence and ability to grasp the book’s meaning. It’s too obvious, too predictable and too heavy on the melodrama.
One can only hope that the bitterness, despair and hatred found in the writing are in no way reflective of the author’s own life. As for the book’s one point of redemption? It’s only 165 pages long. Short, but definitely not sweet.
Answer Me by Susanna Tamaro, Secker & Warburg Press. Paperback at £10.00. Available from the Moufflon Bookshop
