70% Acrylic 30% Wool
by Viola Di Grado
Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2014
Date Read: April 9 2022
This is possibly the strangest book I have read in quite a while. Set in Leeds, Camelia is lost in her life having dropped out of university and moving back home to care for her mother who has suffered a psychological break at the loss of her husband and Camelia’s father. She has gone completely mute and only Camelia seems to be able to interpret her mother’s meaningful stares.
Her mother was once a beauty and a world-renowned flautist. Her father was a writer and Camelia had become used to existing in artistic and literary circles. With the death of her father, everything came crashing down, including her opinion of him. He was killed in a car crash with a woman that was clearly his lover.
One random day, Camelia meets Wen and he takes her on as his student of Chinese and he begins teaching her Chinese ideograms or hanzi. Why Di Grado doesn’t actually use the word hanzi, I will never understand. As she immerses herself in these lessons, she begins to parse the world in a new way, applying a new lens to the world around her. And slowly, feelings begin to grow between Wen and Camelia.
As Camelia begins to further immerse herself in the world around her, she also urges her mother to establish a life outside their dilapidated and filthy home. She forcefully signs her mother up for photography classes. And low and behold, her mother begins dating her teacher, Francis.
Neither of these relationships works out in the end and the two women end up right back where they started except the mother has re-embraced language.
What makes this novella notable is the language Di Grado uses, with her “…literary style inspired by the syncopated rhythms of modern music.” I was often startled by her analogies or simply her descriptions of the world around her. While the story itself is ultimately sad, I will remember her work always for her singular prose.
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