Happy Ending     by Francesca Duranti, Translated by A Cancogni Original title: Lieto fine Original language: Italian Published by Methuen Publishing Ltd Format: Paperback ISBN: 0749399937 List Price: £4.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £4.99 Published by Random House Pub. Date: February 1991 Format: Hardcover, 165 pages ISBN: 0394575482 List Price: $17.95, £11.41 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £11.41 Published by Minerva Pub. Date: 1992 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback Not available for ordering Published by Minerva Pub. Date: 1992 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback List Price: £4.99 Not available for ordering Published by Random Pub. Date: 1991 Pub. Place: USA Format: Hardcover, 165 pages List Price: $17.95 Not available for ordering Published by Heinemann Pub. Date: 1991 Pub. Place: UK Format: Hardcover, 164 pages Not available for ordering

Click on image to see enlargement

And it really does have a happy ending — beautiful, romantic, even realistic. Duranti takes a very classical format; a family, a fading head of the family, an interloper who rocks the boat of everyday life and a series of adults who refuse to grow up — and she elegantly arranges the pieces to form a tale of continuity and renewal. The book is a very beguiling expression of the Italian ideal of family as an association of mutual concern, a source of all—accepting, spoiling love — a vision that will perhaps seem even more ideal to readers in the Anglo-Saxon world, where imper-sonal societies don’t seem to encourage much more than a small unit of consumption, a generator of shopping lists.


Ideal or not, the issues that arise within a family are not skipped here: authority for example, personified by the family’s female head who doesn’t allow herself a moment’s rest from being in control (‘Authority is a way of walking, of speaking to the dog, of opening a door’). A well-crafted story.

‘«Get hold of time and gather all its moments together so that they won’t disperse like a flock without a shepherd. Each instant should mark at once the accomplishment of an old commitment and the promise of a new one. Never live ‘at random’, never say ‘I can’t’. Above all, and most crucially, never look for an excuse: to reign simply means there is no one to call in sick to.»’ p149