In a sensitive, absorbing story of life and love after war translated by Virginia Jewiss, Melania G. Mazzucco (Vita) examines the challenges and new beginnings a female officer finds upon returning home from service in Afghanistan.
In her 27 years of life, all Manuela Paris ever wanted to be is a soldier in the Italian army, but after finally achieving her dream, the young sergeant may see it slip away. Home from Afghanistan on disability leave after barely surviving a suicide bombing, Manuela waits in limbo for the physical and psychological exam that will tell her superiors whether she is fit to return to duty. Although her life and identity are completely tied up in her military career, Manuela now suffers from the symptoms of severe PTSD: flashbacks, vomiting, nightmares that leave her screaming all night despite the benzodiazepine drops she takes to help herself sleep.
Her mother and her older sister, Vanessa, have never understood Manuela's choices and hope that she will now give up the army, settle down and have a family like a "normal" woman. Manuela disinterestedly suffers through her sister's effort to fix her up, focused only on returning to Afghanistan, but an unexpected chemistry with a stranger who lives in the hotel across from her family's building blossoms into a love affair. Handsome Mattia, 13 years older than Manuela, is an enigma. He carries no ID, and while he assures Manuela that he's neither running away from a wife or in trouble with the law, he won't tell her where he comes from, what he does or why he always wears sunglasses in public.
The story is told in "Live" chapters, which offer a third-person view of Manuela's present, and "Homework" segments, journal entries she writes about her time in the army and Afghanistan because her therapist believes the process may help her heal. Through her homework, readers see Manuela fight to qualify as officer material, fall in love with Afghanistan despite the camel spiders and insurgents, and display a combination of sincerity and grit that makes the male soldiers under her command accept her into their brotherhood.
While her romance and the mystery of Mattia provide momentum in Manuela's present, it's the poignant, slow unraveling of her past and all that she lost that will catch readers' hearts and minds. Mazzucco isn't out to reboot G.I. Jane or create a female super-soldier. Instead, she gives us a wholly human protagonist who must and does prove herself, whose heroism is of a quiet and stern variety. For those reasons, we must agree with Manuela's younger brother that this heroine "is better than Lara Croft." --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: Translated from the Italian, this story of a young female veteran struggling to overcome PTSD and return to duty strikes both intellectual and emotional chords.