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The Extraordinary Event of Pia H.

by Nicola Vulpe

The Extraordinary Event of Pia H. is superficially a tale of a wife gone missing from a Spanish plaza – miraculously vanished into thin air, if two elderly doñas are to be believed – and a frantic husband’s search for her. However, within the story’s dense, dreamlike folds of shifting identities, questionable realities, and a cryptic parallel narrative, deeper and darker possibilities exist.

Malcolm Jones, Pia’s husband, has travelled from Canada to the Spanish town of León to recover from a nervous breakdown due to workplace stress and an unnamed “difficult incident.” Contrary to the belief of the Spanish police, a psychologist, and a Canadian Consulate official, Malcolm insists that he came to León with his wife, and that her disappearance is as mysterious to him as it is to everyone else. He embarks on a surreal journey through Spain, into Italy, and finally to Slovenia to find Pia. Vulpe, whose fiction debut this is, masterfully conveys Malcolm’s sense of confusion and disorientation, but increasingly the reader wonders about the man’s possible culpability in his wife’s disappearance, and about what really prompted him to come to Spain.

Vulpe’s addition of a parallel narrative about a Swiss sea captain provides some potential insight into Malcolm’s strange circumstances. Captain Piccard insists that he has experienced an extraordinary event at sea. Like Malcolm, Piccard is regarded with doubt and suspicion. It is possible that he has invented a fanciful tale to disguise a more mundane reality. It is equally possible that Malcolm concocted his story about Pia’s disappearance to disguise something more quotidian – or more sinister.

In Vulpe’s imaginative novella, events may or may not occur, people may or may not be who they seem, and definitive answers are hard to come by. Reality is fluid and truth is elusive, but as Malcolm himself asks, “Who reads a book or watches a movie to know the ending?” By denying a resolution to Malcolm’s quest, Vulpe sustains the story’s shifting, dreamlike tone to the very end.

The success of The Extraordinary Event of Pia H. lies in the author’s refusal to commit to a concrete tale of guilt and trauma. Instead, he devises an intricate narrative that unsettles the reader’s expectations and challenges the conventions of storytelling.

 

Reviewer: Dana Hansen

Publisher: Quattro Books

DETAILS

Price: $18.95

Page Count: 128 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-0-9810186-0-7

Released: Nov.

Issue Date: 2009-1

Categories: Fiction: Novels