Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato

Mathilda Savitch: A Novel is a deeply moving, very sad story of a brilliant but disturbed young girl grappling alone with untold grief following great tragedy in her family. The voice of the narrative is youthful and often quite funny yet there is a depth and complexity which is very stirring and thought provoking.

Mathilda Savitch is highly intelligent and wise beyond her years. Her parents are academicians and free thinkers. Both Mathilda and her sister have inherited their parents’ fine intellects. At twelve she is insightful, pragmatic and bold. She is at that delicate age in adolescence where she has become a menstruating woman but she is still really a child ~ vulnerable, needy and sad. Her beloved sixteen year old sister Helene, the beautiful, altruistic light of her parents’ lives, has died horrifically under a moving train. Although Mathilda maintains a humor which is sharp and quick, it is merely a veneer covering the great pain she endures from not only losing her sister but her parents as well.

After recalling an episode which “was pretty much a perfect day” in her life, a day she remembers her mother and sister riding on horseback side by side, “The two of them could have been sisters and I could have been the mother I was so proud of them”, Mathilda realizes “This is the sort of thing we should be sitting around the table talking about. Telling stories about Helene, the best days we can remember. It’s supposedly one of the ways normal people grieve.” Mathilda realizes her family is not grieving normally. Her mother has closed herself off and retreated into serious alcoholism and total despondency. Without his adored wife as she once was, her father is lost and helpless.

“Instead I have to wake up one year after my sister ended and I have to put on her dress and march into the living room like a ghost. And even if it’s awful it’s the only way.” Matilda feels she must resort to “awful” behavior in order to get through to her parents. Unfortunately her behavior only seems to drive the wedge deeper between them.

But more true and heart-breakingly so, Mathilda feels that she really is awful. She nicknames herself Lufwa, awful spelled backwards. There are questions about her sister’s death and feelings of guilt which she locks deep within. Her preoccupation with the basement of her home is, I believe, symbolic of her subconscious where these perplexing issues hide. The basement is not only a place to hide but a safe haven from the troubled, terrorized world around her, a place to preserve her vulnerable sense of self.

Not only is Mathilda trying to come to her own terms with her sister’s mysterious death but she has become absorbed in the national tragedies that are happening simultaneously. On the first year anniversary of Helene’s death, the 9/11 terror occurs. While sitting in some classes where some of the teachers read off long lists of those who perished in the terror attacks, Mathilda wonders why “These dead people get special treatment because they died in a national tragedy. But I don’t see how they’re any different from normal people who die. Sometimes in the silence it’s hard to keep myself from shouting her name. In the silence I get mad that no one is thinking about me, about my family.”

In her own desperate way to find closure, appease her guilt and also broach the distance between herself and her grieving parents, Mathilda endeavors to unlock the mystery surrounding Helene’s death.

This masterfully crafted novel is an engaging page-turner which is as sensitive and heartbreaking as it is smart and funny. It is written simply with a youthful tone of a precocious pre-teen girl yet contains a deeper nuance addressing adult sensibilities. I think Mathilda Savitch: A Novel is an extraordinary piece of modern fiction. What amazes me most is that Victor Lodato has so effectively and realistically represented the inner mental and emotional landscape of a troubled young girl. I applaud his uncanny insight and perceptiveness and highly recommend this beautiful and touching novel.

Mathilda Savitch; Lodato, Victor; Picador USA; $14.00