Rosina Lippi: Homestead

By JENNI JONES*

There's an old world charm about Rosina Lippi's Homestead, set in an isolated Alpine village in western Austria. There in 1909 Grumpie Marie, the postmistress, gathers together all seven Anna Finks of the district. Which of them is the intended recipient of a postcard from a certain wistful and nostalgic Anton?

The intertwined stories of the villagers of three clans are told in 12 chapters, each taking a different point of view and set in a different time period (progressing from 1909 to 1977). Mathematically neat but, to me at least, emotionally distancing.

Lippi, who now lives in Washington State, began her love affair with the people of this remote area as a research exercise. After an initial spell of teaching, she began collecting data for a study of the "incredibly beautiful and challenging dialect spoken there." Through talking to women of all ages, listening to their vowels, she learned "what it means to be a storyteller."

The resulting novel contains passages of real beauty. Lippi has the ability, within the space of a few pages, to make you feel you too are in the mountains. With the air full of precisely distinguished smells, you too head towards the ridges where the heart of the storm has settled, "pulling in layers of cloud like shawls over bony shoulders."

You feel the poignancy of men gone to war and women struggling to care for farm and children; you are moved by the tragedy of vibrant young women alone and unfulfilled.

All the more frustrating, then, to turn the page and find those characters vanished. Perhaps the new set will be the descendants of those you met some 50 pages earlier, but the fact remains - you have been short-changed.

By waxing and waning like the seasons, the characters are playing their part in the novel's themes of mutability and constancy. War and other wayward passions intrude - cruelty and nobility, stubbornness and indomitability - but the cycles of life go on. Children make life precious again for damaged adults.

nte Lippi is serious about her research. In addition to local naming conventions, a pronunciation guide and a glossary, we are given three pages of family trees. But she cares about language. As one of her character says, "A blunt scythe can be whetted, but unwilling words are eternally dull." And, acknowledging her editor, Lippi says, "Each sentence seems to hum a little truer because of Joy's perfect pitch."

Having admired the humming of willing sentences in Lippi's first novel, which won America's PEN/Hemingway award, I look forward to her next.

Flamingo

$34.95

* Jenny Jones is an Auckland writer.