The Ancient Hours
Harmony is a small town in the southern United States, whose inhabitants are often closed in their prejudices and loneliness. The first part has a narrator who almost unites the voices of the young people, representing one of the many who have grown up and have now become elderly in the town, hollowed out by a tragedy that has marked the life of every inhabitant of Harmony. One Sunday 18 years ago, Iggy entered a church with a petrol can. Trembling, he approached the altar and tried to set himself on fire. The petrol ended up on the floor, and the match fell from his hand. A fire broke out which killed 25 people, but he survived and was sentenced to death. His agonising voice, waiting for his execution, tells the second part, the heart of the novel. A few weeks from lethal injection, on death row, Iggy dares to dream again, going back over his life and asking himself what led him to that act. Perhaps heroin and alcohol, tormented love for Paul and Cleo, his violent father, but: “It isn’t any of all this. Or maybe all these things together.” The pain that he bore inside wasn’t understood or listened to, a darkness ignored and invisible to the eyes of his friends, until the day it exploded. The tragedy takes on a collective dimension, becoming the failure of an entire community and not an individual alone. The novel features narration that weaves together different voices and times as well. The voice of the main character is followed by the voice of Farber, returning to the year before the fire, and finally the story ends with the voice of Cloud, the following year with respect to the beginning of the book. Michael Bible’s debut is a surprising novel, written with a dry, cutting and poetic language, presenting pages of great literature.
L’ultima cosa bella sulla faccia della terra (The Ancient Hours)
Michael Bible
Adelphi, 2023