The madness of love and the jumbled thoughts of ‘the best day of my life’

Some mothers do not feel up to the task. They reject their children’s attachment just as they cannot accept the physical separation from them that occurs after childbirth. Yet it is precisely this feeling of inadequacy and the resulting tension that give rise to an active dialogue. Thus a struggle takes shape – certainly a complicated one, consisting of long nights and desperate cries – but one that inexorably develops a bond which, day after day, becomes ever more unbreakable.

Nothing is less separate from a mother than a child, and yet nothing is, at the same time, more truly united with the mother than a child. Within this process – which is indeed a continuous journey of self-discovery and the rediscovery of the other who was once part of oneself – a painful exploration takes shape, one that unfolds for the mother within herself and her own physical memory, but also around the void she perceives as sudden and powerful.

Simona Vinci’s latest novel, Madonna di rabbia (Einaudi), is a brilliant and desperate work that delves into a theme still considered socially indecent, as though it were something dirty and criminal rather than a natural, obvious and widespread emotion. An emotion that is an integral part of being a mother.

A single mother, Eva, is accompanied by her daughter Agata, with whom she exchanges constant glances. An ever-present tension leaves both of them locked in a tense standoff, beginning with that meeting/farewell that marks the start of everything: “Her pregnancy had been wonderful, then came the birth. If, as they say, good motherhood stems from a good birth, well, hers will always be marred. The day her daughter was born had been the worst day of her life, and every time Eva hears a mother say, ‘the best day of my life’, her eyes fill with tears and her heart starts to race.”

Simona Vinci shatters the hypocrisy surrounding motherhood, which is often portrayed – from a predominantly male perspective – with naïve simplicity as an experience that subordinates women to a social necessity and a moral obligation. What actually happens, first and foremost, is a radical physical and experiential transformation that remains with the woman even after she has become a mother; it is upon this struggle – characterised by loss and obsession – that the dialogue between mother and children, which lies at the heart of Madonna di rabbia, is founded.

Eva attempts to piece things together by recovering lost or forgotten parts of herself; she searches within her own life story for an emotional depth she did not believe she possessed. She is a woman who has been shaken, emotionally fragile, but above all she is angry – feeling anger towards herself and towards a feeling that is not recognised as legitimate. Yet she has always loved children, and motherhood, too, represented a deep and long-cherished desire for her: “Motherhood is the realm of mad love. Eva’s thoughts are disjointed; they proliferate in her mind every morning as she drags her daughter, her rucksack and the rubbish across the violet-coloured gravel towards the car and then on to school.”

Everything moves in unison, everything exists in the same moment: her daughter’s happiness, the daily routines and the limitations of a life facing its most exhilarating and, at the same time, potentially dramatic test. ‘It would be lovely to walk away,’ thinks Eva, ‘just as some women did – unfit mothers like Muriel Stark, Doris Lessing or Sylvia Plath.’ With *Madonna di rabbia*, Simona Vinci also brings full circle the narrative she began with her 1997 debut, *Dei bambini non si sa niente*. Almost thirty years on, a mother finds herself excluded from the childhood she herself brought into being and from its inscrutable secrets.