Name: kay's review of Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti
Item: Strangers I Know
Rating: 5
Author: kay

Claudia Durastanti

"Durastanti casts the universal drama of the family as the sieve through which the self—woman, artist, daughter—is filtered and known." —Ocean Vuong A work of fiction about being a stranger in your own family and life. Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudia’s mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery. Both parents are deaf but couldn’t be more different; they can’t even agree on how they met, much less who needed saving. Into this unlikely yet somehow inevitable union, our narrator is born. She comes of age with her brother in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a small village in southern Italy and New York City. Without even sign language in common – their parents have not bothered to teach them – family communications are chaotic and rife with misinterpretations, by turns hilarious and devastating. An outsider in every way, she longs for a freedom she’s not even sure exists. Only books and punk rock—and a tumultuous relationship—begin to show her the way to create her own mythology, to construct her own version of the story of her life. Kinetic, formally dazzling, and spectacularly original, this book is a funny and profound portrait of an unconventional family that makes us look anew at how language shapes our understanding of ourselves.

A Novel

Strangers I Know

Stranger is a beautiful word, if you’re not forced to be one. The rest of the time, it’s just a synonym for mutilation, a gun we point at ourselves, and fire. 

The street I see every morning when I step out the door is named for Anne Boleyn; I'm caught between a suffragette and a queen who lost her head.

I'd become a truculent friend, an unbearable daughter, and if I hadn't left for college, I would have officially become a tarot card, a character reduced to the literalness of her existence, just like my mother.

There’s not a single act of violence in my life that I can recall without laughing. 

I came from asphalt, and in that town there was only stone.

When the sun goes down in Basilicata, the sky becomes a lung that coughs up blood and the unsettling light makes you want to cough yourself.

Daniela was blond, short, and curvaceous, and if not for all the black she wore, she would have been taken for a Playboy bunny.

The vertigo of evidence that's been left behind but has no relation to me, in spite of carrying my name.

His life was like a game show with knowledge broken down into simple ideas—appearing smart was easy when you rattled off data your parents were clueless about.

My father and I compete at telling the most majestic lie, animated by the same arrogance of getting away with it.

A deaf girl as an actress is so obvious, her whole life’s a performance 

I'll come for a visit, and she'll show me the leather gloves or the wool skirts she's spread out on the bed, and if I ask for the "brown" ones, she'll say "umber," or correct my pink with cyclamen, or distinguish periwinkle from forget-me-not; she insists it's important to use the right name for things, and all the while I'm thinking of her dead daughter, killed by color.

She was a little girl brimming with energy and hostility. 

Katherine Kenny

I’ve never felt so seen by a book before.

Dennis Jacob Rosenfeld

Normally I would spend a day or two reading a book of this size but this time I just couldn’t do it. I had to let the story breathe. Take everything in at a slow pace. 
Claudia Durastanti writes a novel that is a memoir - a memoir that is a novel - and something in between. 

The book is divided into sections that Durastanti originally wanted to be published in a varied order. To uproot the usual idea of a linear narrative. We hear about a young woman, the daughter of two deaf parents, and from the very beginning she plays around with memories. With how we perceive the events in our lives and how they might differ from the views of people that were there. 

Durastanti uses cultural objects of the past as a way of evoking events in vibrant and vivid ways. The story of a family get together in a basement with dancing and music shimmers in front of ones eyes whilst reading. Everything rings true even when something is clearly not. 

I know it’s still early 2022 but wild things have to happen for this one not to end up on my top list for the year. 

Elizabeth Harris did a wonderful job translating and particularly the passages that play around with language and the meaning of words are done in a beautiful way. 

This is a definite must read!

Katherine Kenny &
Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti

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Katherine Kenny &Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti

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Katherine Kenny &
Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti