Free Day

(Paperback, Main)

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A haunting and powerful portrait of a young French girl, and her desire to escape the world in which she is born, without losing her identity In the marshy, misty countryside of southwestern France, fourteen-year-old Galla rides her battered bicycle from the private Catholic high school she attends on scholarship to the rocky, barren farm where her family lives. It's a journey she makes every two weeks, forty miles round trip, traveling between opposite poles of ambition and guilt, school and home. Galla's loving, overwhelmed, incompetent mother doesn't want her to go to school; she wants her to stay at home, where Galla can look after her neglected little sisters, defuse her father's brutal rages, and help with the chores. What does this dutiful daughter owe her family, and what does she owe herself In In s Cagnati's haunting, emotionally and visually powerful novel Free Day, which won France's Prix Roger Nimier in 1973, Galla makes an extra journey on a frigid winter Saturday to surprise her mother. As she anticipates their reunion, stopping often to pry caked, gelid mud off her bicycle wheels, she mentally retraces the crooked path of her family's past and the more recent map of her school life as a poor but proud student. Galla's rich, dense interior monologue blends with the landscape around her, building a powerful portrait of a girl who yearns to liberate herself from the circumstances that confine her, without losing their ties to her heart.

Reviews

Gallas interior monologue unspools as she cycles, gradually revealing the daily miseries and notable occurrences of her life. Like Holden Caulfield, shes critical of adult hypocrisies, resenting godmothers [who] never give us anything, but alive to the possibilities of the natural world. Readers will be invested in this young womans demand for dignity. Publishers Weekly

InFree DayIns Cagnati shows herself to be a remarkable storyteller who is also an explorer of the psychological depths. Her terse words capture her young characters inner struggle and grief. There is something both of Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield here. Le Monde

The readers heart aches right from the start ofFree Day. The tone is sober, yet intimate. The world of the book is claustrophobic, the heroines situation unbearably moving, the storytelling almost devilishly deft. Is it a masterpiece It is certainly a revelation. LExpress

Author Bio

Ins Cagnati (1937-2007) was a French novelist. From a family of Italian immigrants, she grew up in a rural region in the South West France where her parents were farmers. Her childhood in a rural setting as well as her struggle to integrate into society strongly influenced her works. Liesl Schillinger is a literary critic, writer and translator, and teaches journalism and criticism at the New School in New York City.