Just as the devout Catholic visits the Stations of the Cross to commemorate the Passion of Christ before the crucifixion, physically
moving around a set of stations in the nave of the church, so does Madott's Francesca,
the main character, in this series of interrelated stories about passion and
thwarted desires.
Sensual, vivid, intense, Madott's characters drift in and
out of the readers' consciousness like dreams. Love is a treacherous business
whether it is personified by a controlling lover or unfaithful lover, a charismatic but irresponsible husband, or
the intense, angst-inducing love one feels for an only child. The prose is
elegant, sometimes oblique, which adds to a sense of mystery about the characters.
Francesca passes from one "station" to another in
an almost hypnotic state: falling in love, trying to extricate herself from
damaging love affairs, miscarrying a child, marrying an untrustworthy man, bearing a child, and, parting from her husband - all in a
state of almost exquisite emotional torture.
Sexual love is potent, threatening, angst inducing. For true
sexual passion is tortuous; sexual passion is self-immolating ... here it
disorients, torments, confounds, whether it is the betrayal and lies of Vivi's husband in "Vivi's Florentine Scarf" or Francesca's relationship with the
enigmatic Man of the West in "Waiting (An Almost Love Story)" and
Francesca's ex-husband Zachary Hamilton who features in several stories
("Getting Off So Lightly", 'Solitary Man", "Zachary and the
Shaman", "Chateau Stories") or her one-time lover Vince
("Powerful Novena of Childlike Confidence").
There is something mesmerizing about these stories but there
is also a sense of menace, the sense of the treachery of sexual desire even if
it is not acted upon whether it is the story of the art-loving girl searching for a painting
in "Afternoon in the Garden of the Palazzo Barberini" who fears that the security
guard has lured her into unsafe territory or the fearful Francesca watching her
husband destroy his career, and potentially his family as well, in "Zachary
and the Shaman".
There are many beautiful scenes, too many to recount here
but several come to mind: Francesca and her son observing the remnants of a
dead star; Francesca looking at the painted image of the Virgin Mary and her
cousin Elizabeth and thinking of her lover's mother and sister in
"Powerful Novena of Childlike Confidence"; mother and son listening to a children's choir in Spain in "Travel Stories".
In a manner, Elizabeth, Francesca's lover's sister, represents a
darker mirror image of Francesca - a woman exploited for her vulnerability as a daughter without rights or power, as a sexual being who must now pay for the sin of conceiving before
marriage. Forced into a brutal marriage as a teenager by her parents that she eventually abandons, as well
as her young son, Elizabeth disappears only to resurface at her young son's funeral.
She is bitter and full of recriminations, accusing all present of having
contributed to her son John's death and implicitly to the disastrous consequences of her life's journey. She is what Francesca might have become had
she not had the courage to resist the destructive forces in her life.
Unlike the Stations of the Cross, the end of this book does
not lead to death but a sort of redemption for Francesca. A reconciliation of
sorts.
By the book's end, Francesca has achieved a sort of balance.
By returning to her roots in Sicily ("Entering Sicily"), she seems
finally to have achieved a state of peace. Perhaps it is reliving and retelling
the travails of a beloved grandmother who suffered and loved a great deal (much like
Francesca herself). In the tale of Francesca and son traveling to Spain told in
the shadow of a dear friend's death ("Travel Stories") and of their
later trip to Sardegna ("Cycling in Sardegna") Francesca has finally
come into her own - romantic love is no longer the focus of her intense,
obsessive love. Maternal love is.
She is independent. She is an established professional with
a successful career and supportive boss. She has her son, is separated from
Zachary, and she has reached a sort of emotional equilibrium. She learns
something that most women eventually learn - men come and go but if you do it
right, your child is yours to love, and be loved by, forever.
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