A Fascist Childhood

THE SKY FALLS (158 pp.)--Lorenzo Mazzettl--McKay ($3.75).

Tales of growing up are generally tiresome to those for whom pimples, shyness and first love are not the crises they once were. The Sky Falls is one of the best novels of childhood to appear in many years, precisely because it is not childish.

Two little Italian girls, orphaned in the war. have gone to live with their rich uncle and his family on his estate in Tuscany. They love everybody with the rich confusion of childhood. "I love Baby the same as Jesus," ten-year-old Penny declares, "and God the same as Mussolini, and Italy and the Fatherland less than God but more than my yellow bear." School is a hodgepodge of religion and Fascism. The children sing Ave Maria with a lily in their right hands; then they bawl out the Fascist hymn, switch the lily to their left hands and give the Roman salute.

The war is a remote excitement. When it gets too close, the little girls are sure their all-powerful uncle can wish it away. One night at dinner, there is an air raid that shakes the villa. But Uncle Wilhelm says authoritatively, "Serve the dessert," and the planes fly off. Uncle Wilhelm is Jewish, but his estate is the biggest in the area, and the little girls' only worry about him is that their Catholic schoolmates tell them that he is doomed to hellfire. When retreating German soldiers put up at the villa, the girls are upset that Uncle does not show more hospitality to their visitors. The soldiers cater to the whims of the little girls. There is a touching scene when the German general, invited to a supper in the woods, obediently sips soup in the company of assorted dolls and Penny's yellow bear.

But this childhood idyl comes to a tragic end. A last desperate band of Germans, fleeing before the Allied advance, pass by the villa. Pushing the girls aside, the Germans execute their Jewish uncle's family. Returning to find his family dead and his villa in flames, Uncle Wilhelm shoots himself. Innocence has seldom had a more brutal death.

Lorenza Mazzetti, 30, an Italian film and TV scriptwriter, dedicated her novel (the first of a trilogy) to her own Jewish uncle, who was driven to suicide by the Nazis in the last days of the war. It is a worthy monument.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.