emilybooks:

In this way the book is reminiscent of Federico Fellini’s great and final Masterpiece, Amarcord. The coming of age tale which loosely translates to ‘I remember’ in Italian follows the life of young Titta, his family and the characters of a small coastal village in 1930’s Italy. Unfolding in a series of vignettes Fellinini never gives us Mussolini in great sweeping gestures, instead we are told details of a life lived in the land of Mussolini, the beforehand knowledge that things will and will not turn out all right, lending itself to a greater sense of melancholy. Gurba, like Fellini gives us life in the every day and shines a mirror across it’s multi faceted surface, letting each shine in small slices. Life lived in ‘simpler’ more imaginative times, a time that in actuality, exists only in the minds of children. Throughout the book Gurba revisits this metaphor of child like reduction and innocence, wonder and blunt honesty. Weaving myth against a backdrop of contemporary ills, to show in some way how our collective child like refusal to take on issues such as racism and misogyny still haunt our contemporary lives, tangled and misinterpreted by our children and finally held back up in that multi fractured mirror. 

What Gurba gives us is a world on the cusp of change, for the narrator, and the century. Indeed these are ghost stories.

Myriam Gurba’s Painting Their Portraits in Winter is our August Emily Books pick! Make sure to grab a copy from us–but not before reading Nikki Darling’s excellent review of this wonderful short story collection over at Radar Productions.

[image description: a photo of Painting Their Portraits in Winter by Myriam Gurba against a striped blue cloth background. On top of the book is a glass pipe and a lighter. Beside it is a pink wooden cat with an intricate design, and a tin can with a detailed flower pattern]

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   [image description: a photo of Painting Their Portraits in Winter by Myriam Gurba against a striped blue cloth...

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