Gaëlle Josse

Brief novel written in diary style (in November 1954) of the (imaginary) officer of the Bureau of Immigration on Ellis Island (in the shadow of the statue of liberty) looking back on 45 years acting as gate keeper to America, acting like a half-God on the fate of millions of immigrants.

The loss of his wife, Liz, who dies of the great influenza outbreak acting as a nurse on the island and his strange affair with Nella, the Italian wonder woman, capable of healing with her hands, who brought her mentally ill brother along, are key pivots in this memoir on the flotsam and jetsam of humanity that is dumped on New York’s shores. His brief joy as a married man is broken by the Spanish flu, and leaves him feeling guilty for having brought his beautiful wife to the island. His dealings with Nella, the Sardinian beauty, are morally ambivalent – he tries to save her brother, by trying to marry her (only way to bring in mentally retarded family members), but he performs it all in the wrong order – forcing himself on her the night before the boy kills himself, without explaining the bigger plan to her.

The novel highlights both due process, and immigrant despair. But mostly it tells of a compromised life, of someone who tries to do good, but runs into his own frailty and arduous motives. It also relates the different waves of immigrants hitting America’s shores. It won the EU prize for literature (never heard of before…).… (meer)