EDITORS' CHOICE

John Domini. Earthquake I.D. Los Angeles, California: Red Hen Press, 2006.

Earthquake I.D., John Domini's second novel, is an exploration of contrasts: opulence and destitution; the loved, the loving, and the dissatisfied; intractable guilt, piety and sin; characters' faith in progress while deeply cemented in reality; all interspersed between studies of our varied, yet universal human contradictions. Earthquake I.D. is what results when the sheltered and complacent are confronted with real urgency of situation.

Domini introduces the novel's initial conflict: a wealthy American family pores over maps of Naples, where they are soon to relocate; Jay Lulucita—father and husband—announces, "'we'll never be lost . . . Hey. I mean, never,'" while protagonist, mother and wife, Barbara Lulucita, regards the map's city center-yellow akin to "a gaping maw the color of pus." Yes, the book concerns a nuclear family in a new context—a premise with some dubious potential—but within hours of touchdown in their ancestral homeland—indeed, within the first few pages of the novel— readers understand that there's nothing tired about Domini's well-orchestrated narrative.

Earthquake I.D.s are temporary passport replacements distributed to the again-displaced refugee citizens/earthquake victims of Naples: occupants of the tent city that inspired the Lulucitas to relocate, to help. This setting, one representation of the contrasts between the privileged (Bridgeport, CT) and those virtually without possessions (mostly Sub-Saharan refugees), is a driving force in the novel, a constant element of Barbara's introspection—the root of her inability, and ultimately unwillingness, to wholly invest herself in anything more than shallow and half-hearted philanthropic pursuits. Domini designs the Lulucita's experiences in such a way that the family cannot, because of their social advantages— even when Jay is clubbed in the head, the family's passports are stolen, and the Lulucitas become earthquake I.D. holders themselves—escape the preferential treatment, corruption, shame and notoriety inherent in their international aid worker lives.

Even with a son who on arrival becomes an internationally heralded, if not entirely bona fide faith healer; despite Barbara's propensity to grab for her rosary beads; and regardless of the family's rare moments of altruism, the Lulucita parents are rightfully bruised (and, daresay, doomed) from the get-go—Jay, for instance, is the product of American consumerism (though an admittedly hyperbolic poster boy, at that): his father electrocuted to death during a Hollywood filming snafu, and his mother, now left without husband but endowed with a Hollywood-scale fortune, remains a flirtatious, irresponsible, drop-dead gorgeous bachelorette. And Barbara, the quintessential rich Connecticut Catholic, equally represents a sect of East coast American culture.

To further understand the Lulucitas' predicament and choices, Domini provides what is in many ways Earthquake I.D. in microcosm (about halfway through the novel): a failed adoption of a Mexican teenage girl, Maria Elena, whose "markings [when first found] indicated she'd been in a cage." Maria Elena—who had, once at dinner, "fondled both the older boys at once, dipping in her chair to extend her reach, so that the only thing the others could see above the tabletop were her feral eyes"— was too much for the Lulucitas; she was neither the first, nor last, of the Lulucitas large-scale and failed humanitarian efforts.

Constant references to the social poison that is mass media, the complex development of Barbara's character, the slow reveal of family/company secrets, and concern for the Lulucita children make for justly engaging storylines. And while Earthquake I.D. isn't necessarily a novel about place (what borders couldn't enclose NATO corruption or icons of hope emerging among the hungry?) one of the book's finest attributes is the Naples landscape: southern Italy as described by John Domini.

We move with the family on their frequent excursions to local points of interest, each instance acting as an unique setting for important narrative movement: kidnappings, confessions, murders, faith-healings, etc. Barbara even drops news of her divorce to her children in a museum back-room that stores, "parts lopped off the statues. In gray marble, in green bronze . . . the gathered cocks of Hurculaneum and Pompeii." At other times, however, it's clear that these excursions are for pleasure—a reader's, and likely Domini's; it was a pleasure to visit these elegant representations of the visual and tactile:

In the Fields [Phlegrean] the ground turned to dust around smoking fumaroles, mounds of pale flinders, like smoking dumps of extracted teeth. Two thousand, three thousand years ago, these badlands were said to house a gateway to the Underworld, the poisoned spring where Ulysses spoke with the dead. Yet soon enough the gravel and chalk gave way to actual fields, rippling with mid-June vitality. Low hillsides sprouted mixed greens in mouthwatering layers, while others flowered lavender, crimson, milk-white. Vest-pocket orchards and grape arbors cut rows of terraces across the flatter spaces, squeezing every workable inch of the nutrient-rich soil. Farther inland still, between vine-rows and fruit trees, there began to appear the small herds of buffalo.

Earthquake I.D. is a dramatic narrative of cosmopolitan ideas—social commentary as it should be: implicit and available throughout the text, but neither obscuring nor overborne by a very well told story. Domini speaks not only of inequality as he negotiates the contrasts between the Lulucitas and earthquake I.D. holders, but calls us to consider our own participation (or lack thereof) in the game of contemporary world politics, which, to Domini's credit, includes references to politics on the local level and the heavily-anesthetized U.S. population at large.

Thomas Burke