Time to wait
Time to wait is the debut novel by the Italian writer Valeria Parrella . With this book she made her breakthrough as a writer in Italy. The work was published in the original Italian title Lo spazio bianco in 2008 and in the German translation by Anja Nattefort in 2009. The novel was made into a film in 2009.
Content and structure
The novel tells 40 days of the life of the mother of a premature baby. The narrated time is the waiting of the first-person narrator Maria for the news whether her daughter Irene will survive the time in the incubator of the maternity ward. During these 40 days of waiting, Maria finds herself in a state between hope and fear for Irene. In this state, she recapitulates her life. Waiting for her daughter to survive or die puts the time in Mary's life to a standstill. The mother has to wait next to Irene - for 40 days, eleven hours a day. Suddenly Maria no longer lives in her life. She lives outside or in between, in an empty space of waiting.
The original title describes this space as a "spazio bianco", a white room, the intensive care unit of the maternity ward. This interspace, which for Maria represents an existential acid test, is decisive for the narrative structure of the novel, since Mary's life and her past are brought into the focus of the considerations. The chronological order of time seems to be suspended with regard to the time structure of the narrative. The narration with little action focuses on the portrayal of the inner life of the first-person narrator, which is interrupted by memory sequences and flashbacks into Mary's past, her experiences with men and her family: You learn about the possible father Irenes, who remains unnamed, hers Family socialization between a communist father and an all-enduring, almost pietistic mother figure, her student days and her lifestyle. The 42-year-old evening school teacher tries to introduce migrants and truck drivers to Dante and Manzoni on their second education path in Naples. Waiting is not their business. She is used to living in the rapid progress of the days and in loose relationships, to be self-determined and independent. Her examination of the concept of life of being independent in contrast to being a mother is woven into the thought sequences of the first-person narrator. In between is the representation of the course of the psychological state of Mary, who gives a mood barometer the only chronological track in the development of the action: Her psychological budget is noticeably falling apart. Almost incidentally, the story seems to run its course and the 40 days of waiting come to an end just as abruptly and casually as they began: An SMS message relieves her from waiting when she learns that her daughter is breathing by herself.
subjects
Chance - life crisis
The terms wait and know or not know run through the novel as a leitmotif. They can be used to establish interpretative approaches that suggest central themes of the novel. The first-person narrator's feeling of powerlessness over things that happen in her life, over which she believes she no longer has any influence, not only opens up the possibility of reading the novel in terms of how it deals with questions of meaning, but also the onset of the unpredictable, the not - To narrate what is wanted in the life of the apparently autonomous and self-determined person. For Maria, the relationship between figures and things has been removed from a cause-effect paradigm and has become an inexplicable relationship. The novel uses this relation to clarify a central subject: the suddenness and indeterminability of the existential experiences in becoming aware of a life crisis, the unwanted pregnancy.
Motherhood - being a woman
In her first work Parrella brings together aspects of the women's novel as well as feminist approaches, which are rejected at the same time. The first-person narrative can identify neither with a traditionalist nor with a feminist image of women. She cannot call herself either a mother or an expectant mother. In the area of tension between traditional and individual life plans is the topic of motherhood, which, however, very calmly and without sentimentality makes the narrator think.
Individualism - responsibility
But there are also approaches in the novel that suggest an attempt to portray a moral image of an aging generation post-68 in Italy. The living environment of an independent, working single woman in her early 40s in the left-wing urban milieu of Naples in post-modern and post-feminist Italy turns out to be an at times unfounded and indefinable farewell to a generation that speaks of freedom and individualism but no longer knows why. The only way to live this individualism seems to be in declining the life-style maxims of the single household. The subjects of individualism and responsibility return in the first-person narrator's question about the compatibility of both at the end of the novel, when she begins to adjust to life with her daughter.
Reception and criticism
The novel was received with great interest in both Italy and Germany. The reviews and reviews are mostly benevolent. Especially in the German-language feature pages, waiting time has been discussed positively, if not euphorically. The Süddeutsche Zeitung even spoke of Parrella as “Italy's new storytelling talent”.
filming
In 2009, Francesca Comencini filmed the novel under the original title of the same name Lo spazio bianco . Margherita Buy can be seen as Maria in the lead role . Lo spazio bianco was screened in competition at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival .
expenditure
- Lo spazio bianco . Einaudi, Turin 2008.
- Time to wait . Translated by Anja Nattefort. Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 2009.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung of August 8, 2009.