Our life, from its very beginning, is intrinsically tied to time: hours, weeks, months, years, on to the dramatic backdrops of the seasons, which provide the colourful events that eventually highlight it until the curtain drops.

Salv Sammut, essentially a poet and a very prolific novelist, has, albeit metaphorically chosen summer as the appropriate season on which to base one of his most touching and heart-rending stories to date. 

Fis-Sajf ta’ Żewġt Ibliet, like all of Sammut’s novels, is a romp into crude reality, a cri de cœur of a very sensitive poet-novelist, who is there to draw attention to what is socially and morally bad, offensive and repulsive in every aspect, hoping to be ultimately heard and see better days.

In this, his newest novel, Sammut resorts to the hot, very delicate and controversial topic of abortion. Valeria, the main character in the story, enters centre stage in Rome, where her love story begins.

The essential development, starting off at a brisk tempo, immediately touches the commonplace traits of human emotions:  joy, pain, sorrow and disappointments, which invariably, mercilessly, and sometimes cruelly, provide the drama of every intimate affair.

Fis-Sajf ta’ Żewġt Ibliet is a tale told in two cities: Rome and Mdina. Photos: Shutterstock.com

Ultimately an unwanted pregnancy and the tempting thought of an eventual abortion...  And Valeria, still at centre stage, carries on with her story and moves to another city: Mdina, where, in what could be considered as another novel, the impassioned woman continues with her eventful life.

Poet and novelist Paul P. Borg provides an expansive and highly interesting introduction to Sammut’s novel, stressing his own strong views against abortion and fully complementing those of the author himself.

Neatly and attractively printed and published by Horizons, this is a novel that indubitably should provide not only a very enjoyable read but also lots of food for thought. One should delve well, and deeply, into what Valeria stands for and, despite the inevitable controversies, heed and respect nature and what it stands for.