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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Inheritance
by Natalie Danford |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Unraveling Natalie Danford’s debut novel, Inheritance,
tells the story of a father and his daughter, and explores what an
inheritance is all about. Protagonist Olivia Bonocchio
learns in The road to Urbino was steep and
winding. At each curve, the bus stopped and sighed patiently before the
driver sharply spun the wheel and swung the vehicle onto the next portion of
asphalt. Olivia found the rocking-cradle motion comforting. With her forehead
pressed against the window, she closed her eyes, but even though she was
jet-lagged and travel-weary, she couldn’t have slept, not now that she was
this close. Anticipation fluttered in her stomach, and the key from her
father’s nightstand prodded from her back pocket. She’d taken to carrying it
everywhere. Warmed by her own body heat, it reminded her of the sun-bleached
skeleton of a fragile bird. The bus purred louder as the
driver changed gears, and Olivia opened her eyes and gazed up. Above her
perched on the hill and looking as inevitable a part of the landscape as a
plastic figurine of a bride and groom atop a wedding cake, sat the city where
her father had been born. At least, he’d always called it a city, una città, but
now she saw that it was smaller, more accurately a town. The buildings, all
the reddish gray color of bisqued brown clay with
no glaze, stood shoulder-to-shouldei so that the
cluster appeared a single enormous dwelling intended to house thousands. Two
turrets, which she recognized as the towers of the famous ducal palace,
extended above the rest. Sun glinted off windows
here and there, giving Urbino
the look of a mirage glimpsed through shimmering heat, but this was far from
dry desert. The surrounding countryside consisted of lush green fields dotted
with the occasional farmhouse. She recognized the scenery as the background
from Piero della
Francesca’s portrait of the duke of Urbino, staring
stone-faced at his wife in the other half of the diptych. A framed poster of
the duke in his red mushroom hat had always hung on the wall in her father’s
living room. When, in an art history class in college, the regular click and
whir of the slide projector had thrown the image onto the screen, she’d
smiled in the dark with both recognition and disorientation, feeling like a
third grader encountering her teacher in the grocery store. The sweet, silky smell of a
flower she couldn’t identify drifted lazily through the open windows of the
bus. Around her, the other passengers murmured in Italian in low voices that
blended with the engine’s soothing white noise. Olivia was pleased to find
that she understood their discussions of whether they’d have time to hang
the panni on the line before the sun set, or
what they planned to eat at cena. She was
surprised, however~ that they kept talking and didn’t stare upward as she
did. They didn’t seem to notice that something beautiful hovered over them. Could you grow so accustomed
to the awesome sight of a five-hundred-year-old city planted on an isolated
hill that you stopped noticing it? Olivia smiled, but then she thought of
her father, the last year, and what it had proved: You could get used to
anything. The bus turned, following the brick wall that cosseted the city,
and the town dipped out of sight. It was right above the road, but so close
that it became invisible. Then the bus pulled into a parking lot, and
suddenly the palace reappeared, towering directly overhead. Olivia stumbled off the bus
with the other passengers. The airline had lost her suitcase, so she had only
a small carry-on bag, outfitted with a spare pair of underwear and her
toothbrush and toothpaste. In front of her was a tall brick wall, and above that
the arcaded balconies of the ducal palace, slung between the two turrets.
Behind her and up a steep slope stood a grove of pine trees, to her left a
grand arch with a white stone eagle balanced at the top, observing closely as
passengers from the bus walked beneath it in groups of two and three. The
road they’d arrived on stretched to the right and wrapped tenderly around the
town before tumbling into the green countryside. Olivia opened the side
pocket of her bag and felt for the paper she’d found in her father’s
nightstand after he died. Without pulling it out, she gently caressed the
thick folds. Then she withdrew her hand and zipped shut the pocket. She walked under the gate,
below the watchful eyes of the stone eagle, and started up the cobblestoned hill that led to the town center. How could
he have left a place so beautiful for the generic suburb of Shale-ford? she wondered. The sharply sloped street was wide enough
for cars, but jutting off to each side, like capillaries stemming from a
fatter vein, were tiny alleyways, some fretted with stairs, that burrowed
deeper into the city. Looking down these side streets, she spotted wooden
doors and low windows, most of them with their shutters closed. They looked
like cozy miniature houses for mythical creatures—trolls or fairies. Tentatively,
she touched the key in her back pocket. Might it open one of those cunning
doors? On one of the vicoli, a gray-haired woman leaned out a
third-story window and lowered a basket on a rope. A stout man standing below
packed the basket with a bunch of greens, two tomatoes, and a plastic bottle
of mineral water. “Tira
su!” he shouted, indicating for her to pull it
up. The whole scene felt staged for her, as if she were strolling through a
Hollywood set for a movie about Italy, rather than having just made the
journey—flight, bus, train, and then bus again—to Urbino. Olivia, her breathing
quickened from the climb, topped the crest of the hill and found herself in
the piazza. Urbino’s main piazza was not one of the
famous ones immortalized in art history slides; it lacked the seashell shape
of Instinctively, Olivia
scanned the piazza for anyone resembling her father She herself took after
her mother’s side of the family, with her high forehead and thin hair. There
was a man in the corner, talking loudly with another, who had her father’s
eyes, peering out of deep sockets. A relative? There was another man with the
same eyes, and a third. Exiting the pharmacy was a mother, holding a child’s
hand in hers, who was pursing her lips in thought, a common expression for
Olivia’s father. Descending one of the hills was an older woman, smartly dressed
in linen, whose gray hair came to a point between her eyebrows, just as
Olivia’s father’s hair had. And all around her were foreheads marked with the
regularly spaced wrinkles that always reminded Olivia of a comb through clay.
All these people moved slowly but with certainty, as if their paths were laid
out on the ground for them to follow. Olivia felt their eyes pass over her,
and she imagined their surprise in finding out that she was not the outsider
she appeared. She did have relatives
here—that much she knew. Olivia’s father had told her of a younger sister,
although he’d never spoken the sister’s name. Olivia had sent an announcement
of her father’s death to the address listed under the name Bonocchio in his address book and received shortly afterward
an unsigned piece of paper with “Condoglianze” in handwriting that looked like someone
spelling out words with sticks, along with a shiny prayer card. When she was little, Olivia
had run her finger over that address under B
and wondered what her
relatives might be like. She’d dreamed of a huge family gathered around a
table on Sundays, a warm, earthy grandmother dishing out pasta and urging
her and a multitude of cousins to eat. Typical only-child fantasy, she chided
herself as she got older. In her teens, she’d pictured a more orderly clan of
thin characters out of a realist film. Now she wondered which of the two
she’d find—the grandmother who would press Olivia’s long-lost face to her
cushiony bosom, or the cousins and aunts and uncles who would welcome her
with concern. They were certain to be curious, but would they resent her
father for leaving and, in turn, resent her? Or would she be a conquering
hero? There was another
possibility, as well: Her relatives might not be there at all. She hadn’t told
them she was coming. She’d thought of writing about her arrival, but she
hadn’t known what to say—not the Italian, but the proper expression. Besides,
she wanted time to gather her thoughts. She’d contact them after she’d been
in the city a day or two, she’d figured. Having arrived, she wondered now if perhaps she should
have given notice. She might have been caught in a warm embrace, rather than
standing here in the piazza, trying to pick out familiar features. Olivia followed a sign with
an arrow to her hotel. The woman behind the desk in the nondescript lobby
took her passport without looking up and, in exchange, handed her a key
attached to a strange Saturn-like key ring. It was a large copper-colored
globe bigger than a golf ball, with a rubber strip hugging its middle. In front of the door with
the matching 38, Olivia struggled briefly with the key. It was
old-fashioned—not so different from the one from her father’s nightstand that
still rested in her back pocket. When she tried to open the door, the
gap-toothed end of the key jammed sideways. With careful determination,
Olivia straightened it and pulled it out. She took a deep breath, then
rearranged the key and turned it. It caught neatly in the lock, and the door
swung open. The doors that
swing open on the pages of Inheritance
will bring pleasure to many readers. This is a fine debut novel, full of
descriptive language and engaging characters. Danford’s
description of meals will make you hungry. Steve Hopkins,
May 25, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the June 2007
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Inheritance.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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