Ferocity
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This Strega Prize winner “ticks all the boxes of a thriller while also being a masterfully written, baroque, many-faceted depiction of modern Italy” (The Spectator).
Bari, southern Italy: On a stifling summer night, on the outskirts of town, a young woman named Clara, daughter of the region’s most prominent family of real estate developers, stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. Her death will be deemed a suicide. Her estranged half-brother, however, cannot free himself from her memory or the questions surrounding her death, and the more he learns about Clara’s life, the more he reveals the moral decay at the core of his family’s ascent to social prominence.
Winner of the 2015 Strega Prize, Italy’s preeminent prize for fiction, Ferocity is at once an intimate family saga, a cinematic portrait of the moral and political corruption of an entire society, and a “gripping” tale of suspense (The Irish Times).
“Biting social commentary as well as edge-of-seat reading.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“Allows the mystery to slowly and captivatingly resolve while offering a layered portrait of contemporary Italian life and the abuses of power that money can excuse.” —Publishers Weekly
“Complex, darkly absorbing and mysterious literary fiction.” —Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Lagioia's powerful novel, Clara Salvemini's violent death is ruled a suicide, causing her estranged brother, Michele, to return to the family villa to investigate. Growing up, Clara was the only member of the family to treat Michele, a son of the patriarch's mistress, with any kindness. His return reminds the family of their shame at his confounding childhood behavior, his stints in mental hospitals, and his very existence. As he tries to understand the family's story of Clara leaping to her death, he discovers the rotten core of his father's real estate empire that relies on bribery, shady accounting, and blackmail. In particular, the family's most recent development of resort condos has fallen under suspicion for its environmental impacts and threatens to ruin all the Salvemini patriarch has worked for. Lagioia drifts between timelines as Clara's family, lovers, and acquaintances slowly reveal how she drew them into the web of the Salveminis and how they witnessed her unraveling. This oblique kaleidoscopic approach allows the mystery to slowly and captivatingly resolve while offering a layered portrait of contemporary Italian life and the abuses of power that money can excuse.
