Can the death be defied? Can father's love save his son?

Death and grieving in the robe of magical realism this one is. And the storytelling is masterful! The author does not need hundreds of pages to tell the story. And this Dante-esque quest tale, which feels like the improbable and yet true story you tell after a bottle of wine and only in the nighttime, also feels quite personal (the book is dedicated to author's dead beloved family members and friends).
The story also tells about the familial love and the almost impossible fights we fight for the beloved ones - or not, when we realize our weaknesses. Yet the love might be, after all, stronger than death and also stronger than weakness.

The story is very human - and because of that it is profoundly sad and might feels heavy at times. Yet, its heaviness will not break you, but will make you think about our shared humanity.

And the book is also interestingly spiritual. On the one hand - some anti-Catholic jabs. On the other hand - the rebel priest is still a priest, and the Padre Pio's city still will bring the desired meeting...Very French paradox and maybe the quest for hope?

Wasn't a fan to be honest. Struggled with the storyline and getting engaged. Not for me i'm afraid

While I liked the structure of this book, it just didn't work for me in the end. I still appreciated the concept and think many readers will find it compelling.

It is up to more than half that you understand the true nature of this book. It starts like a common story set in a modern yet timeless Naples, incredibly well described considering that the author isn't Italian. A man carries a vengeance for a death happened many years ago: a boy killed by a stray bullet during a shootout. The boy is the only child of a couple that death will consume up to its limit. But who is this man, whose ties has with the couple and the child? Among the characters that only Naples can give birth, and through a true, chilling descent into hell, all the answers will be given, but the greatest mystery, the one constituted by a pain so great to be condemned to death into life, can't be clarified.
Very unusual and very interesting, a Naples beautifully characterized, a book to read.
Thank Gallic Books and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

From the earliest Greek and Roman civilisations, people have believed in the idea that hell is an underworld accessible to mortals via special gates on the surface of Earth. It was through these gates that Orpheus travelled to rescue his wife Eurydice and Dante descended through nine concentric circles of suffering in The Inferno.

In Laurent Gaudé’s novella Hell’s Gate, hell is a state of mind as well as a place. It’s the mental torment experienced by Matteo, a Neapolitan taxi driver whose young son is the innocent victim of a gangland shooting. Matteo blames himself. If only he hadn’t harried his child to walk faster when he took him to school that morning. If only he’d listened to the boy’s cries to slow down. If only he’d stopped for a second to tie up his son’s shoe lace. Those seconds would have put his boy Pippo out of danger.

Matteo and his wife Giuliana are consumed by despair at the loss of their son. Matteo’s reacts by driving aimlessly through the darkened city every night, not picking up any passengers, just driving. His wife’s response is to demand revenge to bring ‘some small, fragile solace like a little breath of air on my wounds.” But though Matteo tracks down Cullaccio, the gangland leader responsible for the boy’s death, he cannot bring himself to kill the man. Giuliana leaves their marital home cursing her husband for his weakness and cursing all fathers for failing to protect their sons.

Just when Matteo feels his life has lost all meaning, he encounters the strange Professor Provolone and his revelations that there is a way Matteo can be re-united with his son. It requires him to accept there is an underworld the living can enter and from which they can return. It’s through the Professor’s explanations of the “bridges, intersections, grey areas” connecting the two worlds, that Matteo achieves a degree of peace.

"For the first time in a long while Matteo felt happy. He looked at his strange companions: a disgraced professor, a transvestite, a mad priest and the easy-going owner of a café. He wanted to share a meal with these men, to listen to what they had to say, to stay with them in the dim light of the little room, far from the world and its grief."

Determined to recover his son he descends into the sulphurous underworld through a gate in the port of Naples. His companion and guide is the unstable priest Mazerotti.

"They were on foot, going at the halting rhythm of pilgrims lost in a strange land. They were a tight little group of men feeling their way in the night, like blind men holding each other by the arm or the shoulder so as to not get lost. Or like madmen in a boat gliding silently through the water, wide eyed at a world they did not understand."

The rescue requires priest and father to negotiate multiple obstacles all of which are graphically described. It’s a vision of hell that will be familiar from its many depictions in art, one full of writhing shadowy figures streaming through a diseased landscape. Gaudé’s vision comes complete with giant doors sculpted with “hundreds of faces disfigured by suffering and horror … their toothless mouths forever laughing, dribbling, shrieking with rage and pain”; the Spiral of the Dead, a River of Tears where the dead souls are tossed and beaten as they see their lives pass by and Bleeding Bushes adorned with the scraps of flesh from the souls left in the land of the living.

That the boy is rescued isn’t a surprise because of the structure of the novel. Hell’s Gate actually opens with an adult Pippo hell bent on the revenge his father was unable to execute. It’s 20 years after Matteo’s journey into the underworld. Pippo is now a barista with the uncanny ability to concoct exactly the right blend for each character depending on their mood. Tonight will be his last at the cafe however because he is about to murder his murderer Cullaccio. He approaches his task without fear:

"I’ve already been to hell – what could possibly be scarier than that? All I have to ward off are my own nightmares. At night, the blood-curling cries and groans of pain come flooding back. I smell the nauseating stench of sulphur. The forest of souls surrounds me. …. Other people might call them nightmares but they’re wrong. I know what I see is real – I’ve been there."

The book thereafter is organised in chapters that alternate between Pippo’s narrative in 2002 and his father’s in 1980. Taken together they offer an exploration of revenge, guilt and a search for salvation. Regardless of whether you believe in hell, the novel Hell’s Gate is an intense and compelling read that seamlessly weaves fantasy with reality.

A dantesque urban fantasy for our time. So well written. Haunting. A gem.
I hesitated reading this book at first.
The reason being a few expressions in the synopsis that usually tell me the book is not for me: “supernatural elements”, “relationship between the living and the dead” (I am a Christian, and do believe in such a relationship, but the way novelists treat it is rarely compatible with my faith), and “a way he could bring his son back from the dead.”
On the other hand, the author was Laurent Gaudé, who won the Prix Goncourt for another of his novels, and I have actually never read this author! And I usually do recognize the worth of that French literary award. So I thought I give it a try and go from there.
So I started very hesitantly. So much so that at 50% of the book, I still was not sure I was going to continue! And then something clicked, and oh my!
There’s no other way to see it: the writing is just excellent. With amazing descriptions of places, activities of drama, of grief, solitude, and slow descent into hell (at all kinds of levels).
This is a gem, with passages (starting in chapter 14) that read like a modern retelling of the first book of the Divine Comedy, or come to think about it, maybe the three books actually. You could say this is a dantesque urban fantasy on the connection between heaven and earth with an interesting link to the major earthquake that took place in Italy in 1980.
Without spoilers, I will just say it’s about Matteo, his wife Giulana, and their son Filippo. One day, father and son are caught in a shooting in Naples, and the young boy dies. Grief and anger turn into desire of vengeance in the mother, who pushes her husband either to find the killer or bring her back her son.
The book alternates between the before and after of what Matteo will try to do.
You also have here a wonderful cast of characters who have the most extraordinary conversations and set together on a very special mission: a taxi driver, “a disgraced professor, a transvestite, a mad priest and the easy-going owner of a café”.
The priest Don Mazerotti accepts all for confession, including Grace the transvestite (no explicit content) and hence is threatened by Rome to be expelled from his church. Mazerotti will act as the Virgil (cf. The Divine Comedy) of Matteo. Professor Provolone is convinced there are gates to the afterlife, and that “the two worlds are permeable.”
There’s also a fascinating view of what Christians call the communion of the saints, and of the Christian prayers for the dead, with opposing forces of memory and oblivion.
And the last paragraph is the perfect ending!
With only 190 pages, this is a gem you have to read. Don’t fear the “supernatural elements” if they are usually outside your reading comfort zone: they are treated in a unique and fascinating way here. So well done.

This was an intriguing concept of vengeance, death, and grief. The author did such an amazing job portraying the complexity of grief and death, so much so that you can feel and understand the pain and suffering felt by Matteo and Guiliana. You can understand the decisions they make, the various stages of grief that they go through, and the ways in which they struggle to hold onto their lives even as life loses all meaning for them. It was powerful in that way, even though the reader never feels a true connection to any character. I would be hard-pressed to believe that any reader would be able to form a strong bond with the characters in this book, especially based on the storytelling style employed here. Usually, I consider this a negative, but in the case of this novel, it worked. It made the descent into the Underworld the focal point, and added a level of intrigue that may not have been possible if the reader was more focused on the character than the plot. This novel is guaranteed to take you on a unique journey that is thought-provoking and will stay with you long after you finish reading.

A highly imaginative and different take on death I wonder were the writer got their ideas and I applaud them.It was a strange tale but none the less for it.I do admire writers for their amazing ideas some times and this definitely falls into that category .If you are looking for some thing that is very different and some what genre bending this could be the book for you.Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.

"We no longer believe in anything. And in order not to depress ourselves we call that progress."

Oddly, this one was a slow start for me, but I'm so glad I stuck with it... The opening is rather banal - and then suddenly quite horrifying (I have a toddler) - and as I had not read the blurb recently, and couldn't recall precisely what the book was about, I was having a hard time getting invested in the story as a result. Then I went back online to check the blurb - and knew I'd have to keep reading. I'm immensely glad I did. The book was a glorious tale of love and faith and the lengths we will go to for our families - both the ones we are born to/with and the ones we make. Giuliana and Matteo suffer more than any people should have to - and keep suffering long after one would expect the capacity of human suffering to allow... But ultimately they are each saved through their own, individual, brand of faith and it allows each of them to achieve their own, individual, form of redemption.

***
"'But where is it?" asked Matteo, a new curiosity in his voice.
'Where is what?'
'Death.'
'All around you,' was the reply. 'In every dark recess and corner. Under every stone laid here millennia ago. In the dust that flies and in the cold that grips us. It is everywhere.'"
***

I certainly didn't take any comfort in Gaude's vision of the afterlife - this is not the fluffy clouds of Renaissance heaven or the choose-your-own-adventure of Matheson's What Dreams May Come... This is a brutal and harsh vision of What Comes Next, with no differentiation between the good, the bad, or the indifferent. This is not a morality tale of any conventional format - there is no visible post-death reward for being good (or even innocently blameless), no punishment for evil, there is just a devastating wearing down. This is not a traditional morality tale. The redemption that comes in this novel is hard-won - it is not a reward for good behavior, but rather a result of painstaking effort and an unflagging faith. And maybe that IS, ultimately, the moral of the tale...

This is not a story for the faint of heart - there is devastation here, a scorching of the earth that leaves very few people standing through most of the tale... But in the end, love will out - even when it doesn't look the way we thought or hoped it would. All in all, it was quite a beautifully moving tale - difficult to read but worth the effort.

I found this book to be a most unusual, yet rewarding story of love and loss,and the overwhelming grief experienced over the death of a child. This book will not suit everyone as it questions religious beliefs, but it is well written and conveys wonderful visual images. It is creepy in its telling yet awesome in all senses of that word.
A young six year old boy is caught up in crossfire between rival gangs and is killed. Matteo his father was present but failed to protect his son. In the following days, he can only share his grief with a retired professor, a public house owner, a priest and a transvestite prostitute, all of whom he meets at a local cafe. After breaking the news of the boy's death to his mother, she gradually becomes twisted and bitter. The local people she curses as they only came to feast on her sadness, the church she curses as they cannot offer her any consolation. The marriage founders and she commands Matteo to bring her boy back to her from the gates of hell if necessary.
What happens next is stunning and miraculous, but a heavy price is paid by both parents. I cannot give away any more of this story.
I initially stumbled over this story, it was confusing with its talk of rebirth, but I am so glad I persevered. It challenges beliefs of revenge and Hell. I found this book brave and haunting ,strangely eerie and unsettling. I have left a copy of this review on Goodreads.

I've literally just finished reading Hell's Gate and found it a magnificent modern fairytale. I will write a full review tomorrow and add this here, along with links to my blog and other review pages.

2 and a half stars.

Sometimes when you read a book it just doesnt do it for you. This was one of those times. It isnt bad, but i just found myself bored with it. The characters werent all that good to read about and for a relatively short book many times i found that it dragged.

The premise itself is interesting though and the descriptions of hell were really smart. Good but not great.

I received a copy of this from netgalley and these are my thoughts.

I received and advance copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for and honest review.

The nice people at Gallic books sent me an email asking me if I would "Fancy a Trip to the Underworld" and asked me to consider reviewing this book. I confess that I wasn't sure about this one, but I do like Gallic and they have provided a constant stream of books that I love by authors that I am unfamiliar with but have now become favorites. Despite my hesitation, I gave it a try and hoped that this novel wouldn't turn out to be one of those allegorical mind-benders that just made my brain hurt.

Wow, was I wrong.

The underworld is painfully (and geographically) real as are the terrible circumstances that bring our protagonist Matteo to its bronze gates. His six year old son Pippo is killed in the cross fire of a gang fire fight and his sudden and violent death drop Matteo and his wife Giuliana down an elevator shaft of grief which destroys their relationship and leaves them reeling with violent thoughts of violence and revenge. Matteo reaches out to Guiliana but she is unavailable to him and instead gives him an ultimatum--bring me back my son or kill his murderer.

Matteo sets out on a mission of revenge but instead winds up meeting up with other lost souls, also seeking comfort, and finds a professor who tells him, in all seriousness, that the gates to the underworld are real and that he can direct him to their location. With a faithless priest seeking redemption by his side, he enters the underworld with the intention of dragging Pippo back into the world of the living.

The underworld is vaguely Dantesque in terms of the fact that the souls are in torment, but Gaude's underworld is much more like the Greek Hades. The inhabitants of the underworld are "shades" whose main suffering seems to be a unrequited desire to return to the land of the living and there apparently is no true heaven or hell. I won't go into more detail because to do so would be to spoil the pleasure of the discovery. Suffice it to say that Gaude's underworld is a very interesting and profound place with fascinating locations.

Gaude's background is theatrical and it shows in this novel. In theater it is always all about the characters and this novel is very theatrical in that respect. You ache for these poor souls. The pain is relentless and it is impossible to not be moved by their suffering. However, I also found the plot, especially when we venture past the gates of the underworld, to be thrilling. Gaude is a wonderful writer with great style and depth.

I am pretty sure that this book will show up on my 2017 favorites list.

5 stars.

This story is translated from French and set in Naples, which could be an interesting combination, only the translation seems a little dry. Part of this is because some chapters are written in present tense, which I assume is true to the original. It might work better in French, but I had a very hard time getting into the plot.

Sometimes it would start to get interesting, then I would lose track of what was supposed to be happening. Eventually it became clear that a child had been killed and his mother wanted the father to track down the killer and murder him in revenge, but killing a man in cold blood is not as easy as it sounds.

In the process of trying to satisfy his wife's need for revenge, Matteo, the father, meets some interesting characters and finds himself examining some of life's deeper questions. An invitation from an unusual priest to visit the underworld leads Matteo on an adventure he didn't bargain for.

Although it took a while to get into this story, it certainly had some interesting aspects. Depictions of the underworld are always of interest and the characters were a strong point. The ending comes full circle and everything fits into place eventually, but it's the sort of story you would have to read twice to get the full benefit of what's going on.

Perhaps more of a three and a half stars, based on enjoyment. There's no denying the power of the heartfelt pieces of writing about grief and redemption here, but I didn't particularly like the weirder, more metaphysical aspects of it all. The start, where you think you're reading one of the publisher's noir efforts, is great, as a man takes revenge on a Mafioso in bloody fashion, and a child gets killed in a gang shootout. After that you do need at times to brace yourself for what comes ahead – not just the daunting encounters with broken hearts and self-cursed people, but with the frankly odd. The mix of the unlikely and the brilliant leaves me partly in two minds about this book, but I do know some parts I would never fully enjoy, hence my middle-ground rating.

I don't remember why I wished for it, it doesn't seem like my kinda thing. I don't know what to make of it either - its fantasy elements seem contrived and derived from so many known works of art. It doesn't feel very original, yet its foundation is overwhelmingly practical.

Matteo and Giuliana are torn apart by the sudden violence that kills their son - the first third of the book wallows in their unending grief; their sorrow feels tangible and real. But, soon we descend into the realm of the fantastic, and this part of the book feels far too familiar to be novel. It's too derivative of the works of Dante's 'Inferno', without being a direct copy of the same. Despite this, it is a compelling and gripping read.

I found the translation wanting. Despite being erudite, it was not polished. Nor was it free of errors - too often I found myself rereading sentences because there were missing words.

There are enough twists and turns in the tale to keep even the most unlikely reader (me, for example) interested. The atmospheric setting of Naples and the well-rounded characters help carry the story along.

While I don't think this story is memorable, the writer certainly has a firm handle on human emotions and the effects of loss in people's lives.

There is no hope in this book yet it is strangely life affirming

Although this novel is set in Naples and its surrounding areas the author is French and the book is a translation from his mother tongue. Translated books often lose a good deal in the transition. There are a few wonderful exceptions such as “The Name of the Rose” and “Focault’s Pendulum” by the marvellous, late Umberto Eco and the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell but by and large it usually pays dividends if books can be read in the original language in the same way that foreign films often benefit from being watched with sub titles instead of a dubbed version. Fortunately, this translation, as far as I can judge, retains all the flavour of the original.

It is a story about love but more predominantly it’s one about death. The death of six-year-old Pippo who is caught in cross fire on an Italian street while being hurried along to school, gripping his father’s hand. The effect of little Pippo’s death on his parents, Matteo and Giuliana, can subsequently be experienced in the text which follows the opening sequence. Effectively their lives stop. Nothing in the world matters – not even each other.

A chance meeting with other dark characters leads Matteo to a determination that he can go through the gates of Hell of the title and retrieve his son. He may have failed his wife but he will not fail Pippo. It may be arrogant to suggest it but I feel that no-one who is not a parent can fully understand the love of a parent for a child. It transcends all other types of love and most parents would give their lives for their children. What follows is a descriptive passage par excellence. The underworld in all its glory and the suffering of the souls of the dead.

The novel in a strange way is life affirming even though there is no explanation as to why an innocent six-year-old should be trapped in the underworld. The reader is transfixed by the action which rolls out in front of him and totally suspends disbelief.

There is little joy in the book. Instead there is total grief and endless sadness. It’s not at all uplifting yet it tackles a subject most people would prefer to ignore although it is a wonderful reminder that life is short and transitory and death lasts for infinity. It’s also a fine example of how a relatively short book can also be a great one. The read is well worth the effort and highly rewarding.

mr zorg

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

A terrific tale about loss and revenge told with sharp with and bite. Loved it!

I know I'm not the first (and I'm sure to not be the last) person to pick this one up expecting a horror novel. However, don't let the genre deter you from giving this a read. I was pleasantly surprised to find this was not just another author's take on the horrors of hell. Instead, Hell's Gate focuses more on the grief and psychological effects parents go through when losing a child. There's not much to the characters in this novel, though. Each one, to include the main characters, father Matteo and mother Giuliana, were incredibly two-dimensional. I was not in any way attached to them and wasn't necessarily effected by their inevitable fates. If it wasn't for the fact that I myself have children, I don't think I would understand the motivations of the either of them.

That's not to say this made for a bad read. To me, the characters were the only issue, but not anything that ruins the book. The story kicks off on a high note and maintains a high level of excitement throughout. You're made aware (kind of) from the start about what's going, with the details unfolding as you continue the journey. Even with the sequence in hell being a fairly short stint, there is no shortage of action. Gaudé was somehow able to take the aforementioned two-dimensional characters and place them in a unique situation, which made for a truly page-turning story.

Overall, I give this one a solid four stars. I am able to forgive the issue with the characters since this a truly original story told from a unique perspective. I recommend Hell's Gate to anyone that's a fan of a non-horror story tackling the ideas of if life, death, and the after-life.