Blair's Reviews > Hollow Heart

As soon as I started reading Hollow Heart, I was vividly reminded of Di Grado's debut, 70% Acrylic 30% Wool, which I read a couple of years ago. The books mirror each other in many ways: both are about loss, grief and depression; both feature a dysfunctional mother and daughter; both veer in strange and unexpected directions. The writing is so distinctive too, a voice I immediately recognised (anyone who enjoys Yelena Moskovich's writing should pick up something by Viola Di Grado. And vice versa, of course). The difference is that the protagonist of this book is dead. Dorotea Giglio killed herself at the age of 25: Hollow Heart is the story of the aftermath, and it's narrated by her ghost.

On Via Crispi there's a gray concrete apartment building that was built in the seventies, and on the fourth floor there's an apartment full of dust. Inside the apartment there's a mother crying over the kitchen sink, a bowl covered with meat sauce in her hands, soapsuds on her fingers. The water is running. There's an empty bedroom at the end of the hallway. There's a yellow bed, perfectly made, and biology textbooks piled high on the shelves. That mother is my mother: we live together, but I don't know how to reach her. That empty bedroom is where I live, but there's no proof of that fact.

The book opens with an epic portrayal of Dorotea's death setting out from her home city, Catania, and spreading across the planet, 'anatomy [becoming] geography'. Yet surprisingly little changes for Dorotea after her suicide. She still goes to her job in a stationery shop (where her boss turns out to be the only person who can see her). She hangs around at home, watching her mother and haunting the bathroom she died in. She meets other ghosts. She imagines leaving messages for former acquaintances she knows to have died (I loved these messages, their dry humour and matter-of-factness about death). She also regularly visits the cemetery, where she delves below ground and documents the decomposition of her physical body in microscopic detail.

Another similarity with Di Grado's debut: both books are (there's no way of avoiding this dreaded word) quirky, but much darker than the term usually implies. The blurb doesn't quite describe it accurately, and perhaps oversells the novel as a portrayal of the afterlife – but this is understandable, as it's impossible to concisely capture all the avenues it wanders down.

"It's only reality," I told myself, "It can't hurt you."

So Hollow Heart can be somewhat frustrating: it hares off on peculiar tangents rather than addressing what would seem to be the important issues. Dorotea's reasons for killing herself, for example, are never really elucidated – it feels almost like something she just randomly does on impulse. It's obvious not all dead people join the world of ghosts, but it's unclear what the logic is: post-death Dorotea's social circle includes other suicides, but also people killed in accidents, a couple of children and even a foetus.

When I read 70% Acrylic 30% Wool, I was so struck by its originality that I ordered Hollow Heart straight away. In turn, Hollow Heart had me googling to find out whether Di Grado has written anything else since this. (The answer: she has, the novel Bambini di ferro, but it hasn't been translated into English yet.) I just love the meandering strangeness of her style. I wouldn't want to read books like this all the time, but as an occasional treat they are marvellous.

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