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An exotic life idiosyncratically told
AFRICAN SAGA. By Mirella
Ricciardi. Collins. Illustrated.
300pp. $19.95.
Reviewer:
MARION HALLIGAN
THE adage that one shouldn't
judge a book by its cover, has all
the currency of cliche.
But no one really believes it; at
least publishers don't think book-
buyers do; they try for covers that
will sell books even if they don't tell
the whole story. Mirelia Ricciardi's
dustjacket for her autobiography is
typical of the book; unsubtle but
effective. It shows a transparently
frcckled blonde white child photo
graphed against a handsome black
man; no prizes for perceiving any
messages there.
Ricciardi is first of all a glamorous
woman, secondly an adventurer,
thirdly a photographer, and fourthly
and last a writer. Her first book was
'Vanishing Africa', a very successful
collection of photographs, the title
self-explanatory.
This last book is an account of her
family, with photographs, and it is
they rather than the text which
fascinate. If being handsome is good
enough reason for having a book
written about you, then this family
certainly deserves it. But it also
seems to have suffered or enjoyed
more than its fair share of incident.
To begin with, it is racially dra-
matic: an Italian fighter pilot (World
War I) father and a French sculptor
mother of Panama Canal fortune,
amusing relations three of whom
headed Vogue, owned 'Le Jardin des
Modes' and 'Les Arts Decoratifs',
another who was inspired to invent
Babar by their elephant stories. The
three children took French, Italian,
Austrian and Scottish spouses, and
black lovers. All this makes for a
very rich mixture.
In the '30s the parents settled in
Kenya, and built a pink palazzo of
Art Deco inspiration on the shores
of Lake Naivasha. Life in this "mag-
ic" place is the backbone of the
book's story, fleshed out by ex-
cursions into the past, visits to
Europe, safaris in Africa, and
bizarre sea voyages.
A first impression is that the tell-
ing owes little to art. It is a quite
simple, even banal, mostly very fac-
tual account of glamorous people
and events; a nicely paradoxical mix-
ture of the egotistical and the un-
selfconscious.
When she is dealing with events,
Ricciardi writes with a crude vitality
that brings out their drama — mind
you, given the events, it would be
hard to avoid. And of course she is
extremely selective; anything boring
she simply leaves out.
But when she starts on emotional
states the cliches proliferate. Every
now and then she feels the need to
delve into matters spiritual, and then
she trivialises, banalises, and sen-
timentalises to an awesome degree:
"It was a turning point in my life.
I was able to break the curse of
obsession and possession. I emerged
from my despair and anguish and
turned my back on them. I was able
at last to live without the malady of
doubt." Etcetera. "This was perhaps
the drama behind the fairy-tale ex-
terior of our African Saga."
But if the words are occasionally
cliche-riden, and the emotions
almost always so, the photographs
are quite free of such bathos. One
wishes for many more of them. They
are significant, moving, amusing.
Mirella Ricciardi is a real photogra-
pher, as wc say of somebody who is
a real writer, and like a writer she
makes use of everything she finds,
even the nearest and most naked
events.
So she photographs her mother
and husband grieving at her father's
funeral, disturbing enough, and then
her mother dying, a picture that
rather horrifies me, since I think that
this very old woman might have been
allowed the dignity of an anonymous
death. But I can understand the
artist's seeing herself above moral
and social scruples.
Despite such criticisms, however,
this is a succcssful book. It is one
woman's idiosyncratic account of
her life and origins, and like the
person it is boastful, naive, self-
centred, sharp, energetic, clever, in-
teresting, lively. It leads you to read
it to the end, and that's something.
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