Francesca MarcianoBesprekingen

I think the author was not well served by her editor, as the literary veneer (pretentious epigraphs, Joycean method of punctuating dialogue) creates expectations that the facile prose does not fulfill. Definitely not a novel for people who need to like the protagonist, or find characters "relatable." Interesting view into the lives of white Kenyans, but the author is a tad superior, and her tone a little glib; she tries too hard not to be Isak Dinesen, but ends up making Out of Africa (the novel) seem like even more of a masterpiece in comparison.½

I read this book years ago but cannot remember the story or whether i liked it a lot or a little. Guess I need a do-over.

I bought this book when it first come out and began to read the opening chapters. I got incredibly busy with my trip to Russia in the summer of 1999 and the book went into a box with other items going to storage for later. It was not until the summer of 2022, that I picked up again and read the entire novel in just a few days. Somehow, the book puts that time period, some 20+ years ago into context with not only the events that Marciano writes about but also how I felt about being in my early 30's. She captures life at this age so well. This novel does hold up well over time because of the reference points and the struggles that come with discovering oneself and the daily challenges of just living and loving where your are going as a person. In some ways, reading it twenty years later holds a wonderful sense of nostalgia too. If you have ever been caught between two relationships at one time, you can relate to some of these characters.½

Absolutely captivating in a subtle & sublime way. Marciano is a master.
I didn't want to put this book down; nor did I want any of her stories to end.

I stayed up way too late (Early?) to finish this new collection.

Absolutely captivating in a subtle & sublime way. Marciano is a master.
I didn't want to put this book down; nor did I want any of her stories to end.

I stayed up way too late (Early?) to finish this new collection.

The title of this collection would seem to suggest that these stories are about animals. Although they haunt these stories, animals are not their primary focus. The animals are there to evoke relational dynamics¬—predator-prey, friend-foe, dominant-dependent, savior-enemy, trusted-betrayer. These stories are instead about how humans seem to have so much difficulty with relationship issues. Yet they come quite naturally to animals. Using remarkably few pages, Marciano succeeds in immersing one into the lives of six interesting, complex and believable women, while never failing to show compassion and understanding for their humanity.

“Terrible Things Could Happen to Us” is about what happens to an extramarital affair when the less dominant partner’s spouse unexpectedly dies. Marciano cleverly employs shifting perspectives and a surprising climax to show the arc of this relationship.

In “The Girl” Marciano uses the cliché of “running away to the circus” to follow a teenage girl’s emotional journey from rural poverty and drug rehab to communion with snakes and circus performers.

Two couples share a vacation cottage in “Animal Spirit.” Marciano explores differences in attitudes toward commitment between the more established gay couple and the younger unmarried heterosexuals. Issues come to head when the group splinters over their decisions about how to deal with a lost puppy.

“Indian Land” is a remarkable blend of madness with environmental protection. A man suffering from a manic episode in New Mexico contacts his former lover in Rome. She travels to his aid. She is awestruck by the natural beauty of the land and, in spite of his obvious mental health issue, comes to understand his obsession with the place.

A woman takes a Roman holiday from her failing marriage in “There Might Be Blood.” She contracts with a falconer to rid her balcony of hyper aggressive seagulls. In addition, she gets a first-hand lesson in how the law of the jungle works and how it may apply to what her situation.

A remarkable coincidence gives an actress insight into the lasting impact of a fatal accident in “The Call Back.” Marciano uses the image of swoops of swallows to highlight the importance of unspoken communication in this last story.

This collection is a real gem because the stories are thoughtful and consistently excellent.

This is essentially the worst, shallowest romance book wrapped up with literary prose. I detested it. The superficiality and stereotypes that characterize bad romance are fine if presented as a fun diversion. But the same issues in a book apparently meant to be taken seriously are offensive. The book is deeply sexist. The main character, Esmé, thinks like a nineteenth-century stereotype; I was honestly startled by references to cars, and shocked by references to laptop computers. They aren't anachronisms—the novel is set in the 1990s—but they jolted me.

Esmé is profoundly troubled in ways that I don't know the author is even aware of, because her brilliant "epiphany" at the end is just more of the same. Utterly passive in every respect, utterly ignorant, men are inhuman sex objects, and life is a love story starring her.

I am a white American woman who lived in other countries in my young adulthood. Most of the thirteen years I spent overseas was in developing countries. When I talk to fellow Americans about my experience a common comment is “You should write a book!” Not necessarily. Maybe a book from that country by a person who really grew up there would be a better thing to read.

My sister sent me this book among some other paperbacks, and I just finished reading it, and I could barely get through it. While it’s set in Kenya (referred to as “Africa” throughout the book, as though it’s a stand in for the rest of the countries on the continent) there are no Kenyan main characters. Kenyans crop up as mechanics, servants, and drunk drivers. All the characters are”expats”. The author seems to realize that this is a limited view of a country and has her main character agonize over her and her friends’ insularity. This does not redeem the book.

I am also tired of books where the main events are primarily musical beds. Affairs can definitely drive a plot of a book like, say, Anna Karenina. But why should I care about these white people in Kenya having serial affairs with each other and ascribing depth to their self indulgences where there really isn’t any?

Well, I really did not like this book. I feel a bit guilty for being so harsh, but the hell with it. I just can’t read this kind of thing anymore without an intense negative reaction. Maybe if it were written by Flaubert I could have read it straight. But it was written in 1999... when will we be done with the white personal self discovery travelogue genre? I hate it. Stop doing this. No, just because you lived in another country ( and learned nothing about its actual people and culture but spent your time partying and sleeping with other white people), you don’t need to write a book about this. You have absolutely nothing interesting to say and you are bad and you should feel bad.

Excellent collection of short stories, most featuring Italians in international settings.

Contents: The other language; Chanel; Big island, small island; The presence of men; An Indian soirée; The club; The Italian system; Quantum theory; Roman romance.

I enjoyed this but I wanted more ambiguity. I admired the questions posed - what are the ethical responsibilities of journalists in a war zone, but was thrown (and disappointed) by the cheerful, neatly wrapped ending.

Feeling adrift when her father -an Italian poet- dies, Esmé travels to Africa. She is smitten by the vast, incomprehensible beauty of Kenya and impulsively decides to ditch her travelling companion and stay. She takes up living with a safari tour guide, but falls in love with another guy who works as a war correspondent. It is a story of relationships- the ins and outs of friendships, who is with whom - a constant shuffle- for all the room in Africa, the group of European expats is so small it feels crammed with their too-close familiarity. Their widely varied reasons for being in Africa were interesting; not so much all the gossip and innuendo. The main character is kind of pathetic. She has no real reason to be there, never has a job, pines after men. And yet- although that major part of the novel did not interest me much- I found this book rather compelling. Because of the way life in Africa is described. Glimpses of wildlife and arguments on its management, race differences, third-world conditions and horrific stories of genocide in Rwanda are all background material to the story. I wish all that had been in the fore, instead. I liked the writing enough that I wanted to keep reading even though I idly forgot who was friends with whom and which person knew what about the other. I cared more for the picture of a vivid land with its struggles and squalor and beauty.

from the Dogear Diary

The back of jacket description of my copy of this book tells us, " . . . Francesca Marciano evokes the startlingly exotic world of contemporary expatriates living in Nairobi." And while this novel's locales of Nairobi and the Kenyan countryside are certainly exotic to this northern California small town boy, I have to admit that not once was I startled by this factor while reading. But maybe that's my bad.

Our heroine, Esme, is young, beautiful and Italian. Her father, a moderately famous poet, has recently died, leaving her with a apparently adequate inheritance. She goes to Kenya where she is transfixed by the ex-pat lifestyle, the culture of whites more or less floating on the surface of the real, shabby and brutal Africa, and stays. She becomes involved with a handsome safari guide and begins spending time with him out in the wild. Some of the book's best writing, in fact, involves Marciano's descriptions of this world, both in terms of her physical descriptions of the countryside and wallop of alienation the beauty and shear expansiveness this world delivers to a city person trying to find her bearings.

The sense of excitement and dread seems heightened by the fact that many of Esme's friends are European journalists who, from the home base in Nairobi, go into the horrors of the Somalian war and, worse, the genocide in Rwanda, then return to report on the carnage. These events are often well and chillingly described to Esme by these men, but mostly these tales seem to serve Esme as a marker for the meaninglessness of her own life. Sadly, they work that way for the reader, as well.

Mostly, Esme does a lot of hand wringing over the fact that she can't have the man she wants. And so, while there a lot of good writing and some compelling situations in this book (mostly taking place "off stage," unfortunately), the bottom line is that this is at it's core a book about a rather self-absorbed young woman gazing at her own naval. I would have warmed to the book more if the heroine weren't so young and beautiful and her love interests so handsome and dashing. And I always wonder about the motivation of an author who chooses to provide his/her protagonist with enough independent wealth to preclude the need for the character to work for a living. It strikes me as a mark of laziness, as if it's too much effort to mix the need to support him/herself into the character's daily activities.

At any rate, the book is worth reading, and I might give Marciano another chance, too. But somehow I was hoping to be startled.

A story of great contrasts: love and hate, beauty and horrors, health and destruction. The real situation of Africa.

Elle magazine compared this book to [book:The English Patient|11713] but I, respectfully, must disagree. This isn't to say Rules of the Wild isn't a wonderfully enjoyable read -- it just doesn't have the same sense of poetry or plot that The English Patient has. Rules of the Wild is more of a beach read, a little bit of escapist fiction set in Kenya featuring international ex-pats, drugs and alcohol, and a fringe of romance.

I loved this book!

On assignment in Afghanistan with her partner, exuberant, larger-than-life Imo, to interview girls who have attempted suicide to avoid marriage to much older men, Maria, a rule-abiding photographer, is confronted by a difficult choice between journalistic success and her moral compass when she discovers that her job could endanger their subjects.

Through this book I learned a little more about life in Italy and radical politics and activities. But in many ways it is a conventional tale about sisters, lovers and mothers. Marciano recognizes the essence of these often problematic relationships but does not delve deeply enough to expose any original ideas. Also the subplots and interlinked threads seemed less unified than they should have been. Perfectly readable if you're interested in Italy, village life, family relationships, Rome, as I am, but you will find more compelling works on the subjects.

Did Dad die from murder or suicide? Terrorism, drug abuse, family saga, what more can you want?

An emotionally brutal tale of love and loss set against a seemingly lawless and unkind Kenyan landscape. A story of Africa from the point of view of an outsider. Full of vivid characterizations and unwavering self-scrutiny, I found this novel to be devastating and indelible.

She hooked me with the setup about shifting relationships in a foreigner community and then she disappointed me by writing a banal relationship novel that I can't even remember. Also, you can play Africa-through-white-expat-eyes cliche bingo with it.

the bonds between sisters, in all their complexity. This novels gets off to a slow start but is worth the investment.

A teenage girl encounters the shocks of first love at the height of the summer holidays in Greece. A young filmmaker celebrates her first moment of recognition by impulsively buying a Chanel dress she can barely afford. Both halves of a longstanding couple fall in love with others and shed their marriage in the space of a morning. In all of these sparkling stories, characters take risks, confront fears, and step outside their boundaries into new destinies.
Tracing the contours of the modern Italian diaspora, Francesca Marciano takes us from Venetian film festivals to the islands off Tanzania to a classical dance community in southern India. These stories shine with keen insights and surprising twists. Driven by Marciano’s vivid takes on love and betrayal, politics and travel, and the awakenings of childhood, The Other Language is a tour de force that illuminates both the joys and ironies of self-reinvention.