I want you to call me ‘Lufwa,'” the girl says to her beautiful best
friend. The name is the word “awful” spelled backward, and the girl has
already told the reader that she aspires to be awful. Her beautiful
friend complies: She calls her “Lufwa,” which sounds like “La
Fois,” and the girls fall out, thinking that the girl has named
herself “king of France.”

But the girl telling the story is an unreliable narrator, and the
writer of this lovely new novel is a poet and playwright who would
probably know his French, and would definitely know his word choice and
his irony, and the difference between “le roi” (“king”) and “la fois”
(“the time”) and “la foi” (“faith”). Together, these contribute a
delicate, telling touch to a story about a powerless child searching
for something to believe in, in a time of uncertainty.

The book is set in the near future. A second Sept. 11-like attack
has occurred, and ongoing war plays in the background. The immediate
tragedy, however, in the life of 13-year-old Mathilda is the family
devastation caused by the death of her 16-year-old sister, Helene, the
year before. We don’t know about this until Chapter 3, when Mathilda
baits us a bit by saying, “Did I tell you this already? I did, but you
don’t remember. You didn’t understand the code … .”

Then she tells us a man pushed Helene into the path of a train.
Mathilda can’t let that go.

Her mother has sunk into an alcohol-fueled depression. Her father is
enervated with sadness. Mathilda seems to be the only living human in
the household. To assure herself that her professor-parents aren’t
dead, she spies to see if the books they’re reading rise and fall as
they breathe. No wonder the child talks too loudly, pinches the dog and
aspires to awfulness.

She’s also plucking her hair out strand by strand. That may have
another cause.

Mathilda Savitch is part-time Tucsonan Victor Lodato’s first
novel. He’s been an actor and a performance artist, and you can feel
the influence of performance in his narrator’s voice.

Calling their life an “island of grief,” Mathilda fills the vacuum
of parental neglect with memories, imagination, speculation and
scheming. Through flashbacks and Mathilda’s sleuthing, Lodato presents
Helene as beautiful, brilliant and in a dangerous relationship. Through
Mathilda’s ambivalence, Lodato paints former golden lives of her
parents, but a disturbing current state: Her mother spends her days in
a revealing bathrobe, and Mathilda catches her on all fours searching
for hidden bottles.

We watch Mathilda entering puberty as both childlike and jaded. She
rummages through her parents’ bedside stands but wishes they’d “put
locks on their stupid cabinets to keep people from snooping.” She
uncovers Helene’s stash of hidden e-mails (“r u wet?”) and muses on the
tragedy of dying a virgin. She can find anything on the Internet, and
regularly visits fema.gov for the
“disaster of the day.” She’s in love with beautiful Anna but attracted
to blue-haired Kevin.

Lodato’s writing is lush and dense. We spend our time in Mathilda’s
mind, and it’s not a boring place. She’s a reader. In a time of
“terror,” she finds solace in Anne Frank’s diary. The child of secular
parents, she searches for explanations and expiations through
religion—any religion. She assembles a personal pantheon
consisting of Krishna, the crucified Christ, a pretended Protestant
allegiance and the collection of “watchers” she imagines overseeing her
life.

Mathilda’s need for divine intercession grows as the plot
tightens.

That would be “plot such as it is” tightens. The action meanders for
much of the book, through Mathilda’s interactions and through plans
related to the anniversary of Helene’s death—and the book sags a
bit in the middle. Fortunately, Lodato pulls out some suspense, tautens
it with a sense of threat, and throws in a surprise by the end. We
realize only after the fact how precisely he’s spun out the action.

Mathilda Savitch is a fine debut novel. Lodato’s writing is
as tight as tapestry—with no thread loose. His central character
is funny, flawed, multifaceted and fully realized.

And she’s an unforgettable child of a sober new time: “Alone, I
think,” she natters to herself. “A.L.O.N.E. Enola backwards. Like the
first plane of evil a long time ago. The first important bomb fell out
of its belly. But that was a different war, ancient history. Everything
was in black and white. Which made it a lot easier to watch.”

This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2009.