Review of ANNA by Niccolò Ammaniti (New Release)

3 Stars
This novel is set in 2020 in Sicily.  Four years earlier, a virus killed all adults; only children survived but they die as well once they reach puberty.  Thirteen-year-old Anna Salemi and her nine-year-old brother Astor survive as best they can.  Anna does the foraging for food and tries to protect her brother from the world with its feral dogs and children.  Along with a dog and their friend Pietro, they end up taking a journey across a post-apocalyptic landscape.

There are detailed descriptions of that landscape.  This is Palermo, the capital city:  “They entered the silent city.  Nothing had been spared by the fury of destruction.  Not a shop, not a building, not a flat.  All the locks on the doors had been forced.  All the kitchens had been emptied.  All the cupboard doors opened.  Pictures thrown on the floor, windowpanes broken, crockery smashed to smithereens.  Some areas appeared to have been bombed.  Sections of wall were still standing, like sea stacks among heaps of rubble which filled the streets and buried cars.”  The harbour in Palermo is also in ruins:  “The sea front . . . was an unbroken layer of plastic, canvas and stiff cardboard.  It no longer held any interest even for seagulls and rats.  There were heaps of bodies in the piazzas and lime-covered corpses lay in mass graves.  The harbour had been consumed by a fire so fierce it had twisted the iron railings and reduced the quays to blackened expanses.  The only things still standing were cranes and stacks of rusty containers.  Two ships lay on their sides like beached whales.”

Since there are no adults, the children have become wild.  Some have formed gangs for safety.  All are frightened and desperate and so cling to fantastical theories of what could save them.  Anna has an advantage in that her mother left her a book she wrote before she died; “The Important Things” is a survival guide outlining such things as how to dispose of her body, what to do once there is no more electricity, what to do in case of illness, etc.  This book helps Anna make sensible decisions for herself and her brother. 

It is the characterization of Anna that is the strongest element of the novel.  She is a complex character who has both negative and positive qualities.  What stands out is her love and protectiveness for her sibling.  At the same time, she is easily angered and can be cruel.  She is surprisingly mature in some respects:  she is responsible, resourceful, and brave.  On the other hand, as befits her age, she has childish characteristics.  For example, she is afraid of the dark, foolishly headstrong, and naïve about romantic relationships.  The trek she takes becomes a sort of coming-of-age journey during which she comes to a number of realizations. 

She learns about the universal will to survive:  “she sensed that life is stronger than everything else.  Life doesn’t belong to us, it passes through us. . . . [She] sensed that all the creatures on this planet, from snails to swallows, and including human beings, must live.  That is our mission; it has been written on our flesh.  We must go on, without looking back, for the energy that pervades us is beyond our control, and even when despairing, maimed or blind, we continue to eat, sleep and swim, struggling against the whirlpool that sucks us down.”  In one life-and-death situation, she refuses to give up:  “something tough prevented her from giving up, an indomitable will to live took hold of her limbs.”  She also learns from a friend about the value of living well; Pietro tells her, “’In the end, what’s important is not how long your life is, but how you live it.  If you live it well – to the full – a short life is just as good as a long one.’” 

There are some elements which bothered me.  Since there is no adult supervision, it is not a surprise that the children drink alcohol and use drugs.  What is frustrating is the way the author used their imbibing to obscure what happens.  This is the case with the Spa Hotel episode that is muddled and just becomes weird.  The pace of that section is slow and it just seems to ramble.  There are some inconsistencies:  one of Pietro’s aunts was believed to be a lesbian and the other, asexual, but “the dream of living in a harem and sharing [the consummate ladies’ man’s] favours stimulated their libido”?  The repeated, miraculous survival of the dog is incredible. Is his determination to be seen as confirmation of the universal will to live?

I felt obligated to finish the book, but I can’t say that I really enjoyed it.  It does not add anything fresh to the genre of dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction.  As has been pointed out by others, the book is certainly reminiscent of Lord of the Flies and several other books.  I appreciate the use of a female heroine but that too is not original.  

Note:  I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. 

To read an excerpt, go to https://www.guernicamag.com/anna/.