Sister Clara – Il-Mara Midinba 
by Salv Sammut. 
Published by Horizons.

Salv Sammut is essentially a poet, a very sensitive one at that; but he is also a brilliant novelist. His highly readable style is captivating both in its form, and in the way that in every novel he writes he goes very deep into the enigmatic element of humanity, hitting out at the innumerable shortcomings that assail society in general, sometimes with very tragic results.

Sammut does this in most of his poems, but invariably in every novel he writes. He typically follows a narrative line that is captivating from page one, and gradually gathers momentum as what he wants one to read between the lines becomes more evident, (sometimes) crude but  nevertheless realistically painful. Sammut has just published Sister Clara – Il-Mara Midinba (The Sinful Woman), a  novel which, in my opinion, shows how as the author grows older and gathers more experience, he is becoming more and more conscious of human frailty, and the extant dangers that this same frailty is eventually preparing for humanity itself.

In the novel, Sammut stresses explicitly on the good and the bad traits of the characters in his book, the beauty of real love and the pain of turbulent emotions. He hits out mercilessly at envy and its destructive  effects on its victims. With an almost poetic exuberance he waxes lyrical about true friendship, unconditional repentance, altruism and emphatically about hope and a better future.

Two young women, friends since adolescence, both utterly different in character, have eyes for the same man

Two young women, friends since adolescence, both utterly different in character, have eyes for the same man, who ultimately becomes a victim of circumstances. One of the women is gentle and sensitive; the other, as a result of a terrible trauma in her girlhood, becomes a victim of two conflicting personalities. Feeling repentant after a very wicked deed, she seeks refuge as a nun in a convent, resorting to  self-inflicted pain in the hope of achieving forgiveness for her sins.

Sammut opens this novel with a beautiful poem, Kemm, which is indeed a prelude reflecting what is to come. It is followed by a prologue, 43 titled chapters, and, once again in a superbly effective epilogue, the author ends a story which, in its utterly human essence and brutal reality, will never end!