Where She Has Gone

Martha Wilson is Canadian correspondent for the Japan Times (Tokyo) and
a Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

This final volume in Nino Ricci’s “Rita trilogy,” which began with
Lives of the Saints (1990) and continued with In a Glass House (1993),
takes the protagonist, Victor Innocente, from Toronto to Italy in search
of answers to the questions that haunt him.

At the outset of the novel, Victor becomes reacquainted with his
half-sister Rita. His determination to discover the truth about Rita’s
father prompts his return to an Italian village—a place whose
existence is not recorded on many maps—where he attempts to connect
with his family. Truth is elusive and many-sided. As the novel
progresses, Victor’s journey takes many unexpected turns.

As always, Ricci’s prose is elegant and exact. His voice here is
sombre, so that even his descriptions of sun-filled streets give the
feeling of an impending chill in the air. His characters pick up on
barely perceptible changes in the atmosphere, as if they were reading
the wind: “In the dim lighting and cave-like hollowness and damp of
the exhibition hall it seemed we ourselves were reverting to a sort of
half-humanness, to basic animal principles of aversion and threat.”

Where She Has Gone raises aching, familiar questions. Ricci explores
not only the answers to those questions, but also the silences that
surround them.