BRIEF COMMENTARY ON THE BOOKS:
UDILLA (2005, Fabbri Editori, 134 pages)
Set in the Middle Ages, it’s the story of a girl turned into a warrior, seeking revenge and finding, instead, maturity, compassion and friendship.
The story is agile and engaging. It has a peculiar style of a troubadour song, or a knights’ quest, with unexpected turns, and new characters appearing along the way.
The narrative style is light, however the Author is not afraid of using a proper language, with high narrative quality, richness of vocabulary and precise, sometimes precious cameos, both from the visual and from the literary point of view.
The characters have a rich depth: Udilla, who must learn to forget hate and remember smile; Cristiano the squire, who wants to be a minstrel but cannot shake his past of warrior; Sir Galvano, the old knight unbeatable at the sword as well as moral sense.
Around them, casual road companions, bad and good, each with a story, that sometimes is changed by the encounter with the three.
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EFREM, soldato di ventura (fortune’s soldier) (1973, Mursia Editore, 214 pages, from 12 years old) See also translated passages from G.Rodari’s presentation.
Published in instalments in the iconic children’s journal “Corriere dei Piccoli”, was afterwards collected into a book.
Set in North Italy in 1366, when armies of soldiers of fortune ravaged the Country in perpetual fights between the Emperor, the Pope and each and every one of the local Princes, it’s the story of a young peasant force-enrolled and made into a soldier. Some of the many characters are historical, the others are fictional, but always very credible, while all the details of the story, from weaponry to buildings, clothes and tactics, as well researched as you would expect from an Author with a history degree under his belt.
It’s a highly engaging story that spares no truth about war and despair. Although its time and conditions are so much in the past, the reality of it can be easily transferred to today’s world: famine and terror haven’t changed much from Medieval Lombardy to Darfur! The book shows that war has a logic into itself, from which it’s hard to salvage peace and decency. However this is exactly what Efrem does, paying sometimes heavy prices. What the reader is left to wonder, in the end, is if this effort succeeds in the long term. This makes of this book not just a story, but a chapter in the life of the growing up reader.
The language has Milani’s usual elegant correctness, however there is a sense of stringent urgency that translates into a sober style, well suited to the drama around and inside the characters.
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UN ANGELO, PROBABILMENTE (An angel, probably) (2004, Einaudi Ragazzi, 120 pages, from 11 years old)
We are in Africa, in one of those countries where tourists go without ever knowing of the civil war that ravages the villages and leaves children without home, family, limbs.
An Italian millionaire becomes a casual savior, standing alone in the face of mercenary troops and senseless destruction.
An unassuming personal story, simply told, makes an unforgettable lesson about love, war, and anything in between. As often happens in Milani’s stories, also this one doesn’t have a clear cut ending: something is over, what’s next? In this way, it’s impossible not to keep on thinking.
Milani is very much abreast with contemporary themes, never afraid to show crude realities, compassionate but never patronizing. His no-nonsense, clear prose helps young minds to see beyond what they hear at the news, and to be able to ask their own questions.
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L’UOMO VENUTO DAL NULLA (The man come from nowhere) (2000, I Delfini Fabbri Editori, 140 pages, from 12 years old)
A little town with an industrial past, a group of intermediate school children, a mysterious uncle come from nowhere, a few days’ visit: nothing will be the same ever again.
In this story Milani explores the jungle within: divorced or distracted parents, bullying, marginalization; and choices, courage, respect, solidarity.
He refuses the doctored reality offered to children raised in glass houses; as usual, he tells how life is, but with gentleness and sympathy, respectful of children’s sensibility. He doesn’t show the way out of problems, he shows that the way exists and encourages to look for it.
This book should be recommended reading to all children… and their parents.
The style is immediate, supported by a language very close to today’s children; there is even some elegant concession to youth slang.
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L’ULTIMO LUPO (The last wolf) (1993, Piemme Junior, 146 pages, from 12 years old)
In this story Milani explores two topics of interest. One is the relationship between young and old, two groups that in modern life seldom get in touch. The other is the choice between protecting and exploiting wilderness.
84 year old Mario is the last inhabitant of an abandoned village on the edge of mountain woods; he has renounced his past of hunter and has entered a deeper understanding of the woods and its inhabitants. His 12 year old nephew, Enzo, has never met him nor the woods before. The encounter happens on the eve of a chase that aims at killing the last wolf in the woods.
Enzo’s horizons will be lastingly enlarged, and his moral standards will come to terms with the concept that life is more complicated than children are usually told.
Simply and elegantly told, this story presents dilemmas and choices from a boy’s point of view. There are no explicit lessons, and every understanding is blurred by uncertainty and doubt. The reader will find a personal way to reckon with issues.
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L’AVVENTURA DI TOMMY RIVER (Tommy River’s adventure), (1969, Mursia, 216 pages)
In 1990 it was Dances with Wolves. In 1970 it was Little Big Man and A Man called Horse.
Tommy River’s adventures started much earlier, in 1958, as installments in the “Corriere dei Piccoli”. Those adventures were later collected into books (the present one, and “Tommy River e lo Scozzese”, Mursia Ed.).
Now we are used to the idea of the “good Indians”: it wasn’t so when Milani started his Western stories. And telling American history from the side of the loser Confederates wasn’t that common either.
This book tells about two great segments of River’s life. In the first one, as a Confederate soldier, we are taken with him to the battlefield of Gettysburg. It’s a six-chapter breathless rush, with strong visual impact.
In the second one, it’s River’s life among Cheyenne Indians.
In both parts loyalties are questioned (duty against self preservation; natives’ and colonizers’ rights). As usual with Mlani’s style there aren’t easy answers, or answers at all. Just the problems are set out clearly, and in this they become transferable to today’s reality and problems. If a lesson can be drawn, it is that morals come before convenience, and sometimes even before law.
The style of the book reflects its first publication, on newspaper. It’s direct and fast, with almost pictorial descriptions. River’s character, as the sad and lone hero (against his own wishes), always showing integrity and compassion, is a direct descendant of those medieval Knights, that a reader cannot but fall for.
Presentation by GIANNI RODARI (excerpts translated)
From “Efrem, soldato di ventura (soldier of fortune)” (1973)
(a story set against the mercenary wars of 1366 Italy)
…..
Mino Milani, who has a degree in History and has been also a librarian, has all quotes at hand and knows all the books from which, if he wanted, he could make up not one of two, but even three chapters of “historic background”. However he doesn’t wont to, because he is not an old style novel writer, but a writer of today, contemporary of cinema and television, two inventions he has long come to terms with, translating their great lesson into a modern technique: telling by images, and giving a fast pace to narration. He doesn’t want to because he cares for the story of his main character, not that of XIV century Italy. A character doesn’t want too heavy frames, too thick backgrounds: he must be seen well, on foreground, to understand who he is, what he wants, what he does, to decide if he’s nice or not, to suffer with him, if this is the case.
…..
Efrem’s story is an adventurous one, as many others told by Mino Milani: Far West stories, science fiction stories, histories within History. To tell adventures, in my opinion, among those born after Emilio Salgari, no one is better that Mino Milani in Italy. And if there is another one in Europe, I don’t know him.
But Efrem’s is a different adventure altogether. Many things happen, but the most important ones happen inside the character, not outside him. The clashes are dramatic, the twists happen at the right moment, but the story runs straight on a single track, without knots of plots, ramifications, back steps, overlapping, and it runs more in Efrem’s heart than in front of his eyes. So much so that the tension comes, all right, from the question: what is going to happen to Eferm now? But much more comes from another question: what is Efrem going to become now? His adventure is the human adventure. The territory he must explore is his humanity. The conquest Efrem longs for is… Efrem himself, his future as a man.
….
His Captain basically wants him to learn a skill, but Efrem doesn’t renounce to set himself a higher goal: to conquer a conscience.
In proposing children such an arduous theme, Mino Milani has scored the mark. He has treated them as men [and women], interested in a human drama.
… With children it’s wrong to undervalue their intelligence and their moral commitment, to think one has to do kiddy talk to be listened to, or to believe only the most evasive colours of adventure can fascinate them. Mino Milani has never committed this mistake. But in this book he’s gone further, in his exercise in trusting children. It’s evident in a more robust style, in a bold use of an adult narrative technique, that the old canon of a “children’s literature” – conceived in an air of kindergarten and nursery room – would have condemned.
To the reader Efrem is much more than a play mate: he’s a life mate. Identifying with him, the reader doesn’t live just his emotions, going through – vicariously – terrible moments: he lives his problem, from chapter to chapter he reckons the choice frame, and refers that choice to himself. The picture – perfectly designed, although without any pedantry – is that of a time far away: but the moral choice doesn’t belong to that time, it’s always contemporary, the child can live it having in front of his eyes the world of today, its harshness, its cruelty, its drama.
The ending is not optimistic, it’s problematic. Open to hope, of curse. But the success of Efrem’s good intentions is not fool proof. After the word “end” the reader can’t feel completely reassured: he’s bound to think, to go on with the adventure on his own, within himself. The same then happens in reality: a problem gets solved only to make room for another one. Mino Milani is too serious a writer to talk in another way, to tell consoling lies. In this too he reveals his trust in children: which is the secret of the admiration with which he’s followed, from book to book, by legions (not of fortune) of young readers.
The CD recording of Luca Manghi and Madoka Ochi's successful concert "Italy Meet Japan" is released now. It was a recital of Italian and Japanese music, classic and contemporary, by Auckland based Italian flautist Luca Manghi and Paris based Japanese pianist Madoka Ochi.
