In 1975, "I was the Arminuta, the girl returned." A thirteen year old girl once lived near the sea in Southern Italy. "From my house near the beach, you could hear the sound of the waves." Fish dinners eaten in the garden and walks to the ice cream shop were commonplace. She attended swimming lessons and dancing school. Her best friend was Patrizia. One day without warning, her parents said, "I'm sorry, but we can't keep you anymore..." She was whisked away to the country, to the chaotic home of her "birth mother". Her birth mother's greeting upon her arrival, "you're here".

"From the moment I was given back to her, the word 'mamma' had stuck in my throat". "Behind her a fly buzzed around in midair, now and then flinging itself at the wall, in search of a way out." "... I would learn to compete for food and stay focused on my plate to defend it from aerial fork raids".

Despite the deprivations encountered by the teenager, she was able to bond with two of her siblings, oldest brother Vincenzio and younger sister Ariana...but...where did she truly belong? It seemed that neither the mother who birthed her or the mother who raised her until age thirteen would offer her any explanations for their actions. "I was twice an orphan of two living mothers." This is a heavy burden to be placed on teenage shoulders.

"A Girl Returned" by Donatella Di Pietrantonio presents detailed descriptions of our unnamed protagonist and fleshes out many principal and secondary characters. This work of literary fiction left me wanting clarity. Why did these two mother figures behave in this manner? What life path did "the Arminuta" eventually travel? Did her siblings land on their feet? This reader felt that there were too many unanswered questions.

Thank you Europa Editions and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "A Girl Returned".

A slim volume packed with emotion. A wealthy, urban, childless couple make an arrangement with a relative in the country, poor and with an overabundance of children, to raise one of their daughters as their own. For 13 years she has a life filled with love, her parents’ undivided attention, a best friend at school, dancing classes, beautiful things, until the day she finds herself unceremoniously dumped back with her birth parents and five siblings, none of whom she knew existed. Shock enough, but to make matters worse no-one tells her why. Is this temporary? Is her ‘mother’ ill? Will she come back for her? Has she done something wrong? Every child’s nightmare, surely? Her confusion is so well expressed - she fluctuates between neediness and resentment, gratitude and contempt. The writing is unpretentious and to the point, nothing really distracts from the emotional turmoil the girl is going through.

The story is narrated from some point in the future and we have her (we never learn her name) memories of her experiences amongst these strangers, only a year or so. She forms tentative relationships with some of them, particularly her eldest brother and younger sister (these ones are known by their names, the other, boorish, brothers remain simply ‘the brothers’). Her sister Adriana is a delight, feisty yet caring, and is the person most responsible for seeing her through her transition.

Slowly, through hints and confessions, she pieces together what happened. I was impressed by the way this was written, looking back at her own naivety mixed with determination.

‘A little more than a year had passed, but it was the longest year I had lived, and more than all the others would invade the future. I was too young, and propelled by the current, to see the river I’d been thrown into.’

A real treat of a book that I’d recommend heartily.

I'm tempted to guess that A Girl Returned reminded me of Elena Ferrante's books because they share a translator. It's true that it shares, especially early on, the spare language and gritty realness of the Neapolitan novels. But I suspect that any other perceived similarity can be chalked up to my American ignorance of Italian (and, indeed, world) literature, though I wouldn't fault the publisher for riding on the Ferrante wave in selling this book.

I'm not as ignorant where translation is concerned, so I can surmise that Ann Goldstein is at the top of her game. Of the sentences that tripped me up, only one got in the way of meaning; the others simply made me wonder what the original might be, and what alternatives Goldstein weighed. (An example of the latter: "I felt that she was observing with her voracious rapidity the bursting bag, the package I was having trouble carrying.") And I think translations ought to trip up the monolingual reader, as a way of reminding us that we don't know everything. (Again: ignorant Americans.)

The book itself was fantastic: brief, transporting, resonant. It was the kind of story I could have turned around and reread immediately, if I were a re-reader. The relationship between the sisters was particularly affecting. A taste: "She counted my vertebrae, I was so thin, and for each one she made up a story. She called the most prominent by name and had them converse like old ladies, touching one and then another."

The girl returned is a very appt title for this novel.
The novel opens with a thirteen year old girl carrying her belongings up some steps towards an open door held by her younger sister, although the two sisters have never met.
This is a story of abandonment, of good intentions and, how a child fulfils two women's dreams and needs
At thirteen she is send by her mother to live in a poverty ridden home run by a family with three sons and a nine year old daughter.
With a distance of twenty years, now a grown woman, she shares her recollections of those years with her new family, the discovery of her real mother, the abandonment by the only mother she knew for thirteen years.

The writing is beautiful, characters well developed, the subject of the story, perhaps a cautionary tale....

Thank you NetGalley and Europa for allowing me this arc

Remember that section in Austen's 'Mansfield Park' where Fanny Price returns to her ramshackle family in Portsmouth who gave her away? This book takes that premise (slightly more complicated here) and explores the tensions via the unnamed narrator caught between the poverty-stricken mother who once passed her on, and the wealthy 'mother' who returned her.

What Di Pietrantonio captures so well is the intricacy and intimacy of emotions that play out: the unnamed narrator was just 13 when she was unexpectedly thrust out by the family she thought hers. Newly embedded in a poor family and faced with a group of sibling strangers, her navigation via loathing, detachment, anger, self-pity, moments of rage, shame, and unexpected alliances is grippingly rendered.

This isn't a book written in 'beautiful' sentences, but there is a feeling of emotional authenticity and a lovely clarity in key scenes: the beach, meals in the kitchen, what happens at night.

There's a sort of open-endedness about the narrative which I liked: no moral judgement, no neat 'life-lessons, things remain as messy as human emotions. And if Fanny Price is one literary reference activated by the text, another is 'My Brilliant Friend' - Italian class structures, the support developed between two young girls, the significance of education.

Written with economy, there is more going on here than the sparse page count would suggest.