Le belle ossa

Le belle ossa is a coming-of-age novel, a grief novel, and a strange almost-fantasy about childhood, friendship, mourning, and the danger of living too long inside a wound. The narrator is Bruno Gramaglia, who looks back on the death of his mother Veronica and on the secret brotherhood that forms around one stolen bone.

The book opens with the image that governs everything: in 1998, Bruno and three other boys bury one of his mother’s bones in an olive grove. They have stolen it from the cemetery because Bruno’s father has denied him a real mourning. The bone is a rib, “una costola,” and Bruno understands immediately that recovering one piece does not satisfy him; it only makes him want all the missing parts. He wants her vertebrae, hands, skull, jaw, and smile. The opening quote from Ezekiel asks whether dry bones can live again. Bruno’s whole childhood becomes an attempt to answer yes.

The story then returns to 13 June 1996, the day Veronica dies. Bruno is nearly eight. He adores his mother possessively and resents anything that takes her away from him. Veronica is a teacher and a passionate gardener; that morning he finds her in her garden shed, surrounded by flowers but worried over four winter-sweet shrubs that have never bloomed. She says, “Non è giornata, piccolo,” and speaks of the calicanto as if its failure were her own. She also asks Bruno if he ever feels lonely and whether he would like siblings. Bruno says no, frightened by the possibility of sharing her.