Foxes Hill

In this autobiographical novel, through a very simple and linear exposition from the expressive point of view, Franco Arbore tells his real experiences as a boy of just seven years who, alone and on board a bus, in the hot summer of 1955 goes from Corato to Rocchetta Sant'Antonio, a small village in the Sub-Apennine Dauno where "Filomena", the energetic and tireless maternal grandmother, lives. Arriving in the village Franco (Gina's son), in addition to his grandmother (widow for five...
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In this autobiographical novel, through a very simple and linear exposition from the expressive point of view, Franco Arbore tells his real experiences as a boy of just seven years who, alone and on board a bus, in the hot summer of 1955 goes from Corato to Rocchetta Sant'Antonio, a small village in the Sub-Apennine Dauno where "Filomena", the energetic and tireless maternal grandmother, lives. Arriving in the village Franco (Gina's son), in addition to his grandmother (widow for five years), he meets his aunts Paola (teacher) and Lina, subject to the strict rules of his mother, because she is a woman with a "firm and authoritarian" character, his uncles Armando ("initially with brusque and severe ways") and Ferdinando (young university student). But the first to welcome him is the only barber in the village, master Paolo; whose salon isfrequented, even on Sundays, by people accustomed "aloud" to talking about politics, land to peasants without sparing criticism or praise for this or that and where he, skilled in playing the accordion, spends his inactive moments in humming refrains from his imagination. The author in his story often resorts to digressions, when he pauses to denounce the many problems that have marked and mark the daily life of the people of this southern Italian village. A few pages are enough for Franco's "la bella estate" (the beautiful summer), with its daily events, references to the customs of the village and in which grandmother and parents also took part, immediately attract the reader. In short, in Foxes Hill, Franco Arbore remembers with great nostalgia the summers of his childhood spent in Rocchetta ("la Rocca"), which he is pleased to describe also under its artistic-monumental aspect with its castle, (with the tower that " it looks like the prow of a ship ") and the church of" Maddalena "(Magdalene). Faithful keeper of these memories, "which are in my mind like a mine and I am the miner" Arbore hands them to the reader with a calm delicacy and with the candor of a childish gaze. A story that unfolds between the life of the village and that lived in the fields with grandmother Filomena. To make this journey back in the author's biography fascinating, there is a succession of events, including that of the American plane B 24 J that crashed on the evening of 14 October 1944 right on the Hill of the Foxes in which sixteen soldiers died. Not to mention affections, loved ones, figures all particular in character, in attitudes. The reader will not miss the pleasure of capturing environments and people in their smallest details. Finally, Foxes Hill offers the reader the opportunity to open the casket of the memory of life and to live it with it.