In the Gathering Woods

In this skillfully-written and heartfelt collection of short stories, Adria Bernardi allows us to follow members of an Italian (and Italian-American) family through several generations. The connections between the characters of these stories are not always direct, and, in some cases, are more implied than stated. The stories could be read individually, or as a whole, as presented in this volume.Spanning time from roughly post-middle ages to the present, the pieces in this collection allow us not only to observe, but, in some cases, inhabit these characters. One of the most compelling aspects of Bernardi's prose is her obvious love of and fascination with the mechanics of language itself. At times, the characters are depicted ruminating over words and their relationships to one another -- and rather than smothering the story itself in dry semantics, Bernardi accomplishes this with a gentle touch, leaving the reader with a very natural feeling of following these thought processes so that we might know these people better.In the second story of the collection, 'Waiting for Giotto', a simple shepherd's son dreams of becoming a great artist, of being an apprentice to the great Giotto, for whom he patiently waits to return to his mountain village, as if by some miracle the great artist would recognize the man's talent and take him away to the city with him. The man knows in his heart that this will not happen, but he follows his muse ever forward, refusing to give up his calling. He sees and hears his world going by and going on around him -- people in his small mountain village live their lives as they have for centuries. Some take it upon themselves to leave and seek their fortunes -- to him, it is a duty and an honor to wait for his calling. One of the most breathtaking passages in this book is contained in this story, when the would-be artist hears a traveller describing the horrors of the wars that are fought on the other side of the mountains: 'They say that Peace, herself, is revolted, and that she holds her stomach and retches; she has hidden her face under a hood and has started to walk away from the battlefields, following along in the ruts made by the wheels of carts, dragging herself along a muddy road that is lined with corpses, not even bothering to lift the hem of her cloak.'The mountain-dwelling artist goes on collecting tiny bits of colored glass to be used in his masterpiece, a mosaic that may never be completed -- or seen by anyone.The mosaic itself is another apt metaphor for the thread that connects these tales. Up close, it's hard to see -- upon reading the stories in this volume, and viewing them from a distance as a whole, the pattern is clearer.The stories that touched me most deeply are the ones set further away in time and place -- perhaps as the characters in the indivdual stories became more 'Americanized' they appealed less to me. The pieces follow a roughly chronological order, the last being tied in nicely wit