The Hummingbird - Sandro Veronesi

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The Hummingbird

by
Sandro Veronesi

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	The Hummingbird
Author:	Sandro Veronesi
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2019 (Eng. 2021)
Length:	283 pages
Original in:	Italian
Availability:	The Hummingbird - US
	The Hummingbird - UK
	The Hummingbird - Canada
	Le colibri - France
	Der Kolibri - Deutschland
	Il colibri - Italia
	El Colibrí - España

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Italian title: Il colibri
Translated by Elena Pala
Premio Strega, 2020

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Our Assessment:

B : cleverly and effectively crafted, though Veronesi ultimately over-extends himself

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Le Figaro	.	20/1/2021	Astrid De Larminat
Financial Times	A+	9/7/2021	Christian House
The Guardian	A+	23/6/2021	Edward Docx
Le Monde	.	20/1/2021	Florence Noiville
New Statesman	.	15/9/2021	Lola Seaton
The Observer	A	8/6/2021	Hephzibah Anderson
Sunday Times	.	11/7/2021	Lucy Atkins
TLS	.	11/12/2020	J.Ockenden
Wall St. Journal	.	21/1/2022	Sam Sacks

From the Reviews:

"In architectural terms, his latest book, The Hummingbird, is a masterpiece of articulation. (...) What might have been a folly is a towering achievement. (...) In a bravado exercise in chronological orientation, which demands readers’ close attention, short chapters flit back and forth, from the 1970s to the near future, stopping off at key points in Marco’s life. (...) Not since William Boyd’s Any Human Heart has a novel captured the feast and famine nature of a single life with such invention and tenderness." - Christian House, Financial Times

"Everything that makes the novel worthwhile and engaging is here: warmth, wit, intelligence, love, death, high seriousness, low comedy, philosophy, subtle personal relationships and the complex interior life of human beings. (...) The effect is to keep everything fresh and engaging. You remain alert. You sift. You piece the life together like a mosaic. Sure, there may be one or two tiles that you don’t love (...), but these prove to be the exceptions and the overall effect is magnificent -- moving, replete, beautiful. (...) There’s much sophistication in the comedy and the darkness, too. (...) If you’re in need of modern, intelligent European fiction -- and who isn’t ? -- then this is the precise prescription." - Edward Docx, The Guardian

"The complex, subtle design of the novel, with a patchwork of key episodes moving back and forth through time, and its textual variety -- partly made up of letters, emails, transcripts of phone calls -- disguise its saga-like scale, its epic proportions catching you off guard. It’s almost only once you emerge from its acutely painful ending that you realise how much of life you have witnessed -- the vastness, as well as the richness, of the story." - Lola Seaton, New Statesman

"The phrase “summer reading” sometimes carries snobbish overtones, but this is the kind of novel that the season is made for: instantly immersive, playfully inventive, effortlessly wise. (...) (I)t is comforting, hopeful, and distinctively Italian." - Hephzibah Anderson, The Observer

"Relationships end before they begin, characters die and are resurrected, only to die again. The reader’s foreknowledge of certain events could rob the plot of suspense, but Veronesi uses dramatic irony to poignant effect, and still manages plenty of twists and revelations. (...) The final chapters are set in 2030, an ambitious move that doesn’t quite come off. The fleeting glimpses of the future lack the richness of the chapters set before 2010, where believably flawed characters live in fully realized settings. (...) The Miraijin subplot is a disappointment in an otherwise excellent novel." - J.Ockenden, Times Literary Supplement

"This makes knowing gods of readers: we’re aware of every trap he blindly marches into. It’s a blunt but effective means of portraying him as a hostage to fate. (...) It’s a stirring portrait, as Mr. Veronesi is an expert at playing on the reader’s deepest fears and hopes in emotionally involving ways -- though for me the manipulations in the novel’s redemptive ending passed the limits of credulity. But there is no clear line that separates how much higher meaning readers want to believe in and how much they can finally accept." - Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

'Hummingbird' is the nickname of Marco Carrera, the central figure in this novel. He was diminutive-sized as a child, but then, with the help of a hormone-treatment, grew up to be of average height (actually: "just about half an inch above the national average"). After decades of knowing him, the love of his life, Luisa Lattes, realizes it's an entirely fitting nickname, and not just because he was once so small:

You are a hummingbird because all your energy is spent keeping still. Seventy wing beats per second only to remain where you are. And you are truly formidable at this. You can keep still as time flows around you, you can stop it flowing, sometimes you can turn back time, even -- just like a hummingbird, you can fly backwards and retrieve lost time.

       In fact, this also describes the narrative, as The Hummingbird does not simply unfold chronologically. Veronesi switches back and forth in time, from Marco's early days as 'A happy child (1960-1970)' to the penultimate chapter, set in 2030. There is a basic forward motion to the life-story that unfolds here, but the individual pieces are presented out of strict order, jumping back and forwards, often decades at a time; occasionally, the narrator will also mention bits of what is still to come -- episodes that only then later fully unfold. As disorienting as this may sound, Veronesi does in fact keep tight control over his material and there is a surprisingly firm structure to it all: this is not a random assemblage of fragments of a life but rather a carefully constructed portrait (with a bit of a tease here and there, about what is to come).
       The novel begins dramatically enough, in 1999, with forty-year-old Marco being approached by Daniele Carradori, his wife's therapist. Carradori is so concerned about some of what he's heard from Marco's wife, Marina, that he's willing to breach doctor-patient confidentiality, coming to Marco because he believes Marco may be in grave danger. First, however, he has some questions for Marco, to determine whether Marina's claims are true: "if this story about Luisa Lattes is only a fantasy of hers, that changes everything, and it's your wife who is in danger".
       The story about Luisa Lattes is, as Marco finally owns up, true -- but it's not the straightforward story it might seem: he has continued a relationship with this woman, but, as Veronesi eventually describes it: "Marco and Luisa's impossible love story culminated in the ultimate act of masochism: a vow of chastity", which they strictly kept to. The novel includes many communications between them, letters and e-mails, but their relationship is only part of a larger mosaic of relationships -- mostly familial ones.
       There are also numerous e-mails from Marco to his estranged brother Giacomo concerning the disposition of their parent's estate -- "You keep ignoring me and I keep writing", he begins one of them. The detailed inventories he sends his brother shed some light on their past -- not least, through their father's near-complete collection of science fiction novels in the Urania-series, from volume 1 to 899, with only six issues missing. Flashbacks also describe parts of their childhood and youth, and other significant times and episodes from Marco's life, often with commentary or reflection by the omniscient narrator.
       An odd lacuna is anything about Marco becoming an ophthalmologist: there's essentially nothing about his studies or his practicing his profession until very late in the novel -- as if to make completely clear that work is something that is incidental in life, and plays a far less important role than the people one is involved with and the passions one has. Marco is, at times in his life, an enthusiastic gambler, and there's quite a bit about that; his daughter, Adele, is a thrill-seeker of sorts, enjoying sometimes risky outdoor physical activity, but work is relegated to a relatively minor role -- even as Marco's mismatched parents are also significantly defined by theirs: "She was an architect, all abstract thought and revolutionary ideas; he was an engineer, all calculations and practicality" (Distant brother Giacomo, living in the United States and working as a teacher of "rational mechanics" arguably is also defined by his job, but he's barely seen in the novel, so it is hard to judge. (Elena Pala's translation is, on the whole, solid, but she missed the mark here: 'meccanica razionale' (as it was presumably in the original Italian is still the commonly-used term in Italy, but it's very unlikely anyone would call it "rational mechanics" in the US.))
       If Marco had a happy enough childhood, there were clearly great tensions in the house. Mother and father stayed together, but were not a happy couple. Older sister Irene was always troubled and restless. And Giacomo's early break with the family was an almost complete one.
       A fateful evening when Marco went out on his first date with Luisa marked the family, ending in a tragedy which the narrator had already made sure the reader saw coming. The fact that Marco was already twenty-two and Luisa just fifteen when they first go out is rather disturbing (and in no way lessened by the fact that he'd actually held off, falling in love with her (as a twenty-year-old ...) when she was just thirteen), but then again this turns into a long-lasting relationship that is then entirely chaste (which, however convincingly Veronesi paints it, still seems rather peculiar).
       Marco wound up marrying Marina, a Slovenian stewardess he got to know because of yet another dramatic and traumatic episode, believing that they shared aspects of the experience -- though in fact they didn't really. Marina struggles with a lot of issues, nicely summed up by Veronesi when he describes her: "Simply insert a 'not' before anything she'd said about herself, and that'll do".
       Marco's relationship with Luisa does lead to a divorce, but his and Marina's daughter Adele comes to live with Marco. The child had a notable idiosyncrasy: she long imagined she had a thread attached to her back -- though the closer connection her father establishes with her help let it fade away. The symbolism here is a bit heavy-handed -- as are the storylines surrounding one childhood friend of Marco's, Duccio, know as 'The Omen' because of his ability to divine what will happen, something that has a profound effect on Marco's life on at least two occasions. Yet Veronesi's slippery style keeps even these things from seeming too outlandish; the foreshadowing -- hinting at some of what is to come -- as well as the shifting back and forth across events, so that it's not all sprung on the reader at once, is very effective, making most of The Hummingbird very compelling reading; it's easy to get carried away by it.
       Somewhat odd, too, is the attitude towards professional psychological help -- which many of the characters fall back on (with Marina eventually being institutionalized, no less). Already early on we learn about Marco:

All the women in his life, in fact, starting from his mother and his siter Irene, and then on to friends, girlfriends, colleagues, wives, daughters (in short all of them bar none) would invariably end up in the grip of various psychotherapists.. This only confirmed -- as a son, brother, friend, boyfriend, colleague, husband and father -- what he'd grasped from the off: that exposure to "passive psychotherapy," as he called it, is seriously harmful.

       Yet Dr. Carradori continues to be an important figure in his life -- and a man Marco himself turns to when facing particularly difficult situations, right down to the very end. Carradori also turns out to be an almost too good to be true fixer -- but narratively, again, this mostly works for the novel: readers aren't bothered with the nitty-gritty, but rather able to move on the next stage and page.
       Adele has a child when she is still fairly young. She never reveals who the father is -- convenient for the story, because Marco comes to fill that father-role (and does so very well). Adele knows what she will name the child long before it is born: Miraijin -- the Japanese 未来人, meaning: 'Man of the Future' --, regardless of whether its a boy or girl. Miraijin is then a girl -- and a remarkable one, from the beginning, including her physical appearance, as it's as if: "all the world's races somehow came together in her".
       One of the longer chapters, late in the book, describes Miraijin's maturation, covering the years 2016 to 2029, with Veronesi stuffing a lot in there; The Hummingbird goes a bit off the rails here. Unlike the rest of the novel, which in its back and forth allows the pieces of Marco's life to slowly be filled in, this is -- even as its meant to be and presented practically as soaring -- a rather flat information-dump that feels almost stuck on, a less-than-successful near final turn to Marco's story; it doesn't really work very well with the rest of the novel -- especially since, with having her lead the way into the future, Veronesi invests so much in Miraijin without providing a sufficient foundation for it all.
       The final turn then, in 2030, is also a bit of an odd one. Certainly, Marco here is truly left in control of his fate, but it also feels like way too neat and contrived a closure.
       Veronesi does manage to construct an interesting protagonist here. Despite Marco's aversion to psychotherapists -- whereby he emphasizes: "It's psychotherapists I've got a problem with, not psychiatrists" -- and despite his obliviousness to much that is going on around him -- it is his sister Irene who listens in on their parents' arguments, for example, while he remains blissfully unaware of these --, there is quite a bit of self-analysis here, helped on also by the repeated recourse to the wisdom of Dr. Carradori. Marco comes to terms with his life, even if it is a long way in coming, and it's an interesting journey for the reader, too.
       Marco is an unusual man, to the extent we get to know him (and, again, it is problematic that, for example, we practically never really see him in his professional capacity). Even in the most extreme situations -- and he faces several of these --:

He reacted to change like he'd always done in the past: he simply stood still in the middle of the desolation that surrounded him and inhabited that desolation.

Veronesi captures that sense of hovering, hummingbird-like, -- both in Marco and in the narrative in general -- well, and it's part of the appeal of the novel; he really does that well. For all the drama in the novel, it's a surprisingly mellow novel, too -- reflecting also Marco's personality: even at its most active -- and he is, at times adventurous --, there's a passivity to it all as well. The odd relationship he maintains with the love of his life is, surprisingly, entirely fitting.
It does all make for a somewhat odd novel -- one that really doesn't sustain much scrutiny. But it's not really for scrutinizing, and just as a simple read it's fully, even remarkably engaging (at least until the last bits, which go a bit astray). And there are a lot of nice notes to the novel all along the way -- not least Luisa admitting that: "I've just realized I'll never escape Giorgio Manganelli" (and that her fixation on the Centuria-author apparently isn't helping her career at the Sorbonne) .....

- M.A.Orthofer, 1 April 2022

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Links:

The Hummingbird:

HarperVia publicity page
La nave di Teseo publicity page
Weidenfeld & Nicolson publicity page
Grasset publicity page
Paul Zsolnay Verlag publicity page
Editorial Anagrama publicity page
Premio Strega, 2020
Q & A

Reviews:

Other books by Sandro Veronesi under review:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Italian literature

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About the Author:

Italian author Sandro Veronesi was born in 1959.

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