Without Blood

Alessandro Baricco is not only an author but also a musician and an actor. He won several literary prices like the Premio Viareggio and the 'Prix Médicis étranger'. A man and his two children live on a outlying farm. The father is a doctor and since the end of the last war (in an imaginary country) he's known as 'The Torturer'. One day four men arrive at the farm to kill the doctor and his children as a revenge. Nina-the youngest daughter-hides herself in the basement. Tito-the youngest of the revengers and a mere child-comes after her but he doesn't kill her. They look each other in the eye and a fatal attraction arises between the two. Many years later-they are old people now-they meet each other on the street of a town and they decide to have a drink in one of the cafés. This is mainly a novel about attraction and repulsion between a man and a woman. They wage war between them, not with weapons but with words.

Hidden in a small hole beneath the floor of the farmhouse, Nina witnesses the bloody end to a war which had torn the country in two. Salinas, the leader of one side, kills her father for the horrendous crimes done in his hospital by his side during those war years. The resulting fight leaves both her father and brother dead. However, when her hiding spot is found and left undisturbed by Tito, the boy who is with Salinas, her life changes in ways she is not expecting. Many years later, now an elderly woman, she runs into the elderly Tito who is now a lottery ticket seller in a large city. Tito, the last of the three men involved in the deaths, recognizes her instantly. He has his fears of this girl child from his past, now a grown woman. She invites him to sit down and have a drink with her, and then tells him about what happened to her after he saved her life, all those years ago. Without Blood is a short but engaging story. It examines the ways that war affects people, and how a simple kindness can bring strength when needed. The exploration of the human psyche and the way the story delved into human suffering and happiness made this small book a very engaging read. I expected a story about revenge, after reading the first part, and was very surprised by the way the second part of the story unfolded. This was the second novella by Alessandro Baricco that I have read, and I look forward to exploring more of his writing. Armchair Interviews says: Unexpected but welcome storyline.

This novel is disappointing beside Baricco's Silk and Ocean Sea but is still well worth a read. The clarity and "rightness" of his prose continues to create very enjoyable reading. The first half of the book sets the stage - a political murder of father and brother experienced by a young girl hiding under the floor. The second half is the meeting of the now grown woman with the one surviving murderer. What sets Baricco's handling of the plot apart from many authors is the surprising depth in his understanding of the psychological effect on his particular character. Her behavior is unexpected yet perfectly congruent with her personality. This raises the book from polemic into a fascinating study of human nature. It is well worth the short time it takes to read.

This is a powerful fable of the personal toll war takes on individual lives. Baricco deftly explores how both sides of a conflict feel that what they are doing is right and for an ultimate higher good. The slight volume also examines how the personal aspect of war does not disappear once the war ends. In this tale, it lingers on in dangerous rage and ultimately futile schemes of revenge that beget more violence.

Although I did not enjoy Baricco's lastest work as much as his best-seller "Silk", I found that the three qualities that impressed me the most with "Silk" - form, purity of style and language, and imagery - were employed with equal skill in "Without Blood." Told in two chapters, each approximately 45 pages in length, "Without Blood" begins as the story of a young girl who witnesses the assassination of her father and young brother. The assassins, a man named Salinas, his henchman, known only as "El Gurre", and a young man of twenty named Tito, kill her father and brother, and then realizing that she mus tbe hidden somewhere in the house, burn it to the ground. In the second half of the novel, an old woman seeks out a final revenge. Like his work "Silk", "Without Blood" has a simple story. It is not the plot, but the immensely deep and tragic characters that make the novella great. The only problem that I had with the novella is during hte dialogue, Baricco inserts pauses that made it very hard to determine who was speaking, and it is only for this reason that I did not give it five stars.