The water door
By: Rosetta Loy ; translated by Gregory Conti
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 109
Work titles: Porta dell'acqua
Description: "A Garcia Lorca poem gives this book its title, "not even the smallest hand can open the water door," and this epigraph begins a story of unrequited love. A five-year-old girl, the daughter of a bourgeois Roman family in the late 1930s, finds the object of her desire in her German-speaking governess: blond, blue-eyed, milky-white Anne Marie." "As the family moves through its obligatory social rituals, their customs and manners are all absorbed through the wide-eyed gaze of their little girl making her first contact with the outside world. She encounters kindergarten, the nuns and their baroque Catholicism, and most importantly, a fascinating Jewish girl who lives across the street. Their friendship will change her relationship with her governess forever."

"Rosetta Loy's prose animates a kaleidoscopic narrative, combining the intimacy of childhood emotions with nightmare glimpses of Fascist Italy."--Jacket.
Notes: "A paperback edition of this book was published in Italian under the title La porta dell'acqua" -- T.p. verso.