If you do die, on the other hand, we’ll almost never see you again, and certainly, no one will miss you.

PLOT SUMMARY:

A finalist for the PEN Literary Award for Translation, this courageous, inventive, and intelligent novel tells the story of a suicide and what follows. Viola Di Grado has given voice to an astonishing vision of life after life, portraying the awful longing and sense of loss that plague the dead, together with the solitude incited by the impossibility of communicating. The afterlife itself is seen as a dark, seething place where one is preyed upon by the cruel and unrelenting elements.

Hollow Heart will frighten as it provokes, and enlighten as it causes concern. If ever there were a novel that follows Kafka’s prescription for a book to be an axe for the frozen sea within us, it is Hollow Heart.

GRADE: B+

REVIEW:

I read this book because it takes place in my birth town of Catania, Sicily, and because the protagonist dies by suicide but remains alive as a spirit of sorts as she gets to witness her body decomposing. I loved the novel’s first half, the rich descriptions of what happens to one’s body after death, and the listless feeling of seeing life move on without you. Dorotea Giglio spends her ghostly life still working at the stationery shop she worked at while still alive (her boss is the only living person who can see her), meeting up with other ghostly entities, and falling in love with a living young man. The book is incredibly short at 177 pages. Still, the second half of the book didn’t read as easily as the first half (until Dorotea meets Alberto, the young man she falls in love with – it felt like she finally had a purpose instead of simply existing as a ghost). The book was well written (I’d say it’s more literary than any other genre) and it did offer some insight into life after death, and it isn’t your typical ghost story (she isn’t lingering because she’s seeking revenge or anything of the sort). The book had an ending that I would expect from an Italian book (meaning more realistic and not necessarily happy or hopeful as the American market tends to lean towards).

I recommend this book if you’re interested in the afterlife, or want a ghost story that isn’t on the horror spectrum.

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