Fila, short for Filippa, sits in her recently deceased grandmother’s kitchen when she receives a call informing her of her mother’s death: “they say it’s because of her liver, but I can assure you that it was not her liver… I’m sorry, your mother was murdered.”
She’s in Switzerland, where she was born and raised amidst the constant battleground of her family: the fraught relationship between her traditional grandmother, Lavinia, and her erratic, defiant mother, Magdalena – later, Favorita. Despite a lifetime of distance from, and rejection of, her mother, Fila finds herself drawn to the southern Italian city from which the call comes, determined to uncover the circumstances of her mother’s death.
So begins Favorita, Michelle Steinbeck’s second novel; it’s a digestible premise, familiar. But soon soon thereafter, Fila’s investigation unspools into a feverish journey: from sneering, talking marble statues in museums, to a fortified salami factory inhabited by sex workers and children, to a remote countryside manor where fascists and heads of government gather to maintain their grip on Italy.
Favorita is a wildly imaginative novel, expansive not only in the scope of its narrative but also in its language, which is vivid, surprising, and beautifully rendered in translation by Jen Calleja. In it, Steinbeck confronts the legacy of femicide in Italy and beyond, engaging directly with the aesthetics and ethics of true crime. In one of the novel’s most evocative turns, Fila is pulled away from her original mission and becomes increasingly consumed by the unsolved case of “Beautiful Sisina,” a widely reported murder she comes to imagine as a stand-in for every instance of femicide or patriarchal violence in the country. Favorita probes the uneasy boundary between fascination and violation, asking what it means to tell – and to consume – stories of violence against women.
The Cold Magazine (CM): To begin at the beginning: how long have you been working on Favorita, and where did the first spark of the novel come from?
Michelle Steinbeck (MS): At the end of summer 2019 I was in a car in the Tuscan woods, driving to an artist residency, where I wanted to write a little and relax a lot. Just before arriving at the house, the woman driving the car told me about a girl who was murdered just here – she slowed down to show me the memorial stone on the street – after WWII. She didn’t tell me yet that this young girl was still very present – many report to have seen her ghost and everyone in the area seem to have some personal connection to her – and an opinion about who her murderer was, because this remained a mystery. I was about to find out all of this only later, but this was the first spark.
CM: I was really struck by the structure of the book. It opens in a recognisable register (a mysterious phone call, a murder to investigate) but very quickly the narrative expands into something odyssean. How did you approach shaping this journey?
MS: I guess this mirrors my journey with the book. It started with me wanting to solve the old case and writing about it – more or less classic True Crime. Doing so in a haunted villa in the woods, I got distracted/obsessed by the ghosts and writing became a necromancy. These were the ghosts of the historic crime but also the ghost of Magdalena who was already with me since a long time. Thinking and talking about the femicide of Sisina, how I call her, led the way to finally write about Magdalena. With her came her family, Lavinia and Fila, who became my narrator, and the theme of migration and (not) belonging. Then there were the ghosts of fascism, lurking behind every corner of the story I was researching but which also came to life in the encounters I had with locals. So the idea of writing a classical crime novel soon turned into something much bigger – because it became clear that there is not one perpetrator, but many. I guess the journey shaped me and the story, not so much the other way around.
CM: I’d love to ask about the theme of names. The novel draws a fascinating distinction between last names, which seem embedded in patriarchal lineage, and first names, which feel more intimate and more connected to women. The protagonist is named by her mother, grandmother, and the women of the commune – particularly Sorella. What drew you to unsettling conventional naming structures in this way?
MS: I grew up with two first names because my parents couldn’t agree on one – Magdalena and Lavinia felt like a pair who couldn’t agree either. And I was, still am, a slightly different person with each of the names. There really are many – only female – characters with several names in the novel: Magdalena (or rather her parents) had her name changed after coming to Switzerland, to lose the Italian connection. Then she becomes Favorita. Sorella is a chosen name, first she introduces herself with her (sex)work name Genuflessa, we never know her birth name. Then there’s “the witch” we only know by her warrior name. Now that I think of it, the fluidity with names might be an expression of the freedom to shape their own and many identities – also by separating them.
CM: I loved the section composed of newspaper clippings about Sisina’s case. True crime has global appeal, but Italy seems to have a particularly intense relationship with it – I grew up watching Amore Criminale, which reconstructs crimes of passion, as if it were ordinary evening television. What interests you about the way murdered women are narrated and framed in the media?
MS: Wow, I just checked – Amore Criminale still exists! Italy is very interesting in that aspect: there is a lot of awareness of patriarchal violence – in the last years there were massive protests which the government couldn’t ignore, so Italy introduced femicide as its own offence. In the Swiss media this was discussed as a “typical Italian” problem: patriarchal violence because of Macho culture – not mentioning that Switzerland actually has a higher rate of femicides. This is one mechanism: it’s always “the other” who exercises this kind of violence. Another is blaming the victim, especially if the perpetrator is “one of us.” Then sympathy is with him very quickly and justifications are sought: “He could not handle the break up.”
The more I studied the historic case which had huge media coverage then, the more I got sick about the twisted narratives which seemed to violate the victim over and over again – and how this old material read like articles today. That’s why I chose to recreate these articles in the novel. I wanted a reader to have the same experience as I had: First the thrill, the shivers, the True-Crime-excitement. Then the sickness creeping in. E.A. Poe wrote: “the most poetic topic is the death of a beautiful woman.” I think this cultural notion is a form of normalisation of patriarchal violence and part of the problem. Writing this book was balancing on this cliff: How can I write about the violence, without reproducing it? How do you make art without aestheticising it?
CM: The novel also plays with the television conventions of paranormal investigation and ghost-hunting, which both reflects and contrasts your protagonist’s desire to communicate with the dead. What draws you to ghosts as a motif?
MS: I wanted to hear the murdered women I was writing about – but how could they tell me anything, except as ghosts? But what are ghosts? I think a big part of writing the book was about this question.
On YouTube I found these videos of ghost hunters, strolling around the woods where I was staying. They were trying to talk to her too. It was interesting to me how they claimed to know what ghosts are and how to communicate with them through “technology.” It’s a scam, but I could not help the feeling of connection: they’re obsessed with her too!
CM: And to follow that thought a little further: I wondered whether there’s a connection between paranormal possession and the way the protagonist sees her mother and grandmother within herself – in how she stands, how she speaks to boys, what she says and wears. Perhaps we are all, in some sense, possessed by the women who raised us?
MS: I love that. I used to say to my baby: Why are you looking at me like that – with my mother’s face?
CM: To end on a note of possibility: could you speak about the utopian visions in the novel, whether in the women and children of the Salami Factory or in the figure of the avenging witch?
MS: I find it interesting how the Salami Factory is widely conceived as an utopia – it is a militarised fortress. The women built this place because they have no other place to live (much like the real people who live in occupations like this which inspired the one in the book). They have visions of a better, solidaric society, yes. But the counter violence is controversial, at least to the narrator Fila. The lack of justice regarding her mother’s violent death drives her to the idea of revenge. But she feels that exercising violence herself would change her. I think the utopia lies beyond the logic of violence. Like “the avenching witch” says: “The revolution needs to be invented yet.”