Fall of a Sparrow

The Fall of a Sparrow

The Fall of a Sparrow

Scribner 1998

THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHTS

    On Friday August 15, 1980—Assumption Day, the middle of the August holidays—a bomb exploded in the train station in Bologna, Italy, killing eighty-six people, including my sister, Cookie, who was sitting in the second class waiting room, about two meters from where the bomb went off, waiting for a train back to Rome.
    The station has been repaired, of course, but part of it—part of the waiting room—was left the way it had been after the bombing. You can see the bomb crater, which is about the size of a bowling ball. I didn’t see it myself till years later, but I often imagined it. Daddy had a picture, a poster, rolled up in a cardboard mailing tube in the back of his closet. On the wall above the crater a marble stone or lapide lists the names ages of all the people who were killed. Cookie was twenty-two. She was on her way to study international law at the University of Bologna. We thought she was in Rome at the time, staying with friends, but she’d gone up to Bologna for a couple of days to look for a place to live.
    I was sixteen years old at the time and Ludi was twelve.
    The bomb went off at 10:25 Italian time. That’s 4:25 in the morning Illinois time. We were all asleep.
    Before breakfast that morning Ludi and I took our books and walked up to the cemetery to wait for trains, not knowing that Cookie was already dead, or close to it. Pretty soon the Illinois Zephyr came by from Quincy—it ran an hour later on Saturdays—and about half an hour later we saw four freight trains coming together on the two sets of tracks that cross about halfway between our house and New Cameron—two heading for Chicago and two for the west coast. The Burlington tracks go over, of course, and the Santa Fe tracks go under, but it’s exciting nevertheless, because for a while it looks like all the trains are going to collide.

Carolyn Clifford
Woodhull

1958-1980

Contra vim veneris
herbam non inveneris;
Contra vim mortis
non crescit herba in hortis.

Against the strength of love
You will fine no herb;
Against the strength of death
No herb grows in the garden.

Playing at the station in Bologna on the 25th anniversary of
the bombing. The lapide (upper left) lists the names of
those killed in the bombing. The opening behind me was
caused by the bomb. Sponsored by the Associazione tra i familiari delle vitgtime della strage alla stazione di Bologna del 2 agosto 1980.

     Woody Woodhull teaches classics at a small midwestern liberal arts college. He loves the classroom. He loves his wife and three daughters. He loves to play the blues on the guitar and sing his heart out. When Cookie, his oldest daughter dies in that Bologna train station bombing, he nearly loses his heart to mourning. His wife goes off the deep end and enters a convent. His other two daughters suffer as well, and even seven years later as the novel opens, Woody Woodhull has scarcely begun to regain his equilibrium. He throws himself into his teaching, but that's not enough. He throws himself into his other hobby, cooking, with a passion, but that's not enough. And even as he's flirting with the possibility of going to Italy to testify in the long-delayed trial of the train station terrorists, he falls for one of his students, an Iranian exchange student named Turi. This crazy dalliance nearly sinks his academic career, but it also serves as the catalyst for his own spiritual salvation.
     I don't want to go any further in my account of the story except to say that Hellenga brings a freshness and intelligence to every line, and every incident, every motif, every page. Homer, Plato, the origin of the blues, the recipe for several important Italian dishes, mature love, foolish love, and the struggle to discover meaning in terrible family tragedies.
     Anyone who is a parent will find this beautifully-rendered novel excruciating to read, but ultimately cathartic. Maybe if you try it, you'll end up the way I did, weeping like a child, crying so hard I could scarcely see the last few pages.
     —Alan Cheuse, from NPR All Things Considered.

     “Well,” he said; “you might say I’m connected. But everywhere you go you’ll find me connected, lying in wait, ‘cause my name is legion.”
      “Well, Mr. Legion, would you mind if I tried that National Steel guitar in the case?”
      “It’s not for sale.”
      “What do you mean it’s not for sale?”
      “Not for sale to you.”
      “What’s wrong with me?”
      “Look at yourself. It’d be like selling a rifle to a kid, or a drunk, or someone who’s crazy. You don’t know what they going to do with it.”
      “It’s a guitar, for Christ’s sake, not a gun. You don’t need a permit to play a guitar.”
      “Guitar like that you do.”
      “What kind of permit?”
      “VISA Gold, MasterCard, American Express."

Lunch at the Osteria del Sole:

     She opened the window behind them, but a large man in a white apron—a man in his late sixties or early seventies—came
over to the table immediately and closed it.
    “It’s very smoky in here,” Gabriella said. “I thought we’d get some air.”
    “This is a place for smokers,” he said. “If you don’t like it, you’ll
have to go somewhere else.”          —The Fall of a Sparrow

    This book is a compendium of delights, overflowing with insight and passion. The funny parts are absurdly hilarious, the painful ones moving and perceptive.
—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

    For a novel about death, The Fall of a Sparrow is bursting with life. Raucous blues, Italian cooking, raunchy sex, classical literature and even Persian rugs populate the book in such abundance that the reader could be forgiven for thinking he has been invited to a banquet instead of a wake. —London Sunday Times

    In spite of the novel’s seriousness and its keenly felt observations about loss and mourning, there are also wonderful moments filled with humor and charm. —Redbook

    It is rare, not to say unique, for a novel to reduce an experienced critic to tears, but when I felt them trickling down my cheeks I realized that this one had bypassed my usual note-taking detachment and gone straight for the emotions…
    This is a generous, compassionate book, with lavishly described settings, interesting dialogue and characters who are likeable and engaging. Robert Hellenga never falls into maudlin or mawkish sentimentality; instead he uses a rich imagination and masterly language to keep his perilous balance on the high wire of genuine tragedy. —London Sunday Telegraph

    Robert Hellenga’s novel could produce tears and smiles from a sphinx. —She

    Hellenga's humane voice, his ability to illuminate the profundities of life in scenes of domestic relationships as well as those set on a larger stage, gives this memorable novel powerful emotional appeal and literary stature.      —Publishers Weekly

     Hellenga has a gift for nicely pointed satire and a rich, almost lavish sense of place.    —The New York Times Book Review

     The Fall of a Sparrow conveys a sense of certainty and ultimate truth that only the finest writing can achieve. It is an extraordinary novel.       —The Washington Post

     Every time a great new novel like The Fall of a Sparrow appears, it renews the form.     —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR