Fog Sickness | Review

During the Great War, twelve soldiers threw themselves into a river rather than return to the front. Since then, their ghosts have hung over their native village like a curse, sowing death and terror. Alert and stubborn, twelve-year-old Albertina—working with partisans still hidden in the mountains as World War II draws to a close—sets out to investigate. She wants to free everyone from the grip of shame and fear. Two things stand out in this fine novel. First, there is Minghinì, the village madman, who insists that the drowned always return. To silence him, he will be locked away in an asylum. Then there is Albertina's certainty that the boundary between this world and the next is far more permeable than we imagine—it is the connection that Christianity speaks of, yet we so often forget. To reconcile the community, then, requires a feast. Everyone must come. Including Minghinì.