World Literature Today Review: Maddalena Vaglio Tanet, Untold Lessons

So many writers have presented Red Riding Hood’s journey through the woods as an analogy for female adolescence that the forest has become an established trope for the wilderness of puberty. The most notable example is Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves’, where Little Red dons the cap of menstrual blood and jaunts along the path of knowledge to an awakened (and hungry) sexuality. Maddalena Vaglio Tanet’s Untold Lessons is the latest novel to draw from this fairytale legacy: her forest is ‘the first labyrinth’ children encounter on their journey to adulthood. It’s ‘forbidden and dangerous. An ancient, carnivorous place where there are wolves, where children lose their way.’ However, far from being unoriginal, Tanet manages to rework this well-trodden symbolism to make astute observations on gender roles and misogyny in 1970s Italy.  

When eleven year old Giovanna commits suicide in the small Italian village of Bioglio, her bereft teacher, forty-something Sylvia disappears into the forest where, she hopes, no one will find her. These physical woods serve as a twin to the psychological forest Giovanna is entangled in before her death. Developing prematurely, Giovanna becomes overwhelmed by the conflicting emotions of a newly hormone-seeped body and the attention it receives. The novel sensitively captures the uncanny experience of finding one’s body has become unfamiliar, a sensation much akin to wandering in a dark forest without a compass. 

Read the full review here