The bulk of Naspini's novella consists of an emergency call Nives makes to the town veterinarian, a man named Loriano Bottai, whom she grew up with. Less is more in all three of these miniatures. The dramatic concision of this story in tandem with its wide scope reminded me of Edith Wharton's classic Ethan Frome, as well as Jeannette Haien's lesser-known great novella, The All of It. The chicken may have snagged my attention, but what I experienced by the end of Naspini's short novel was Nives' entire life story: the limitations of her horizons as a girl growing up in a certain time in rural Italy her erotic desires and stupid missteps her resignation. You can hear in that passage the speed with which this novella shifts tones: how it fluidly moves from farce to raw regret.
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