Category: Italy

The little I knew by Chiara Valerio

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The Little I Knew by Chiara Valerio

Italian fiction

Original title Chi Dice E chi Tace

Translator – Alisa Wood

Source – subscription book

I have banged on a lot about how much I had enjoyed the books from last year from Foundry editions, which have published several of my favourite books from last year. I must admit this is the first from their books this year that I have read. I was grabbed by Chiara Valerio’s bio as she is an editor, writer and a lit blogger, many years ago, and she has published a lot of books. it sis always great when you find a new writer with many books already out for you to read. This book was on the shortlist for the Premio Strega prize and was inspired in part by. The writer is reading one of Georges Simenon’s novels, his Roman Durs, which inspired her.

And so Vittoria was the first woman to own a boat space at the dock, an exclusively male club. Every year the film Around the World in 80 Days would be on TV, with David Niven as Phileas Fogg, the man who has bet all his money and has to complete a trip around the world and return, by a specific day and time, to London, to the Reform Club, an exclusive men-only club where he is a member. And he manages it, but he brings a woman with him, the Indian princess he has fallen in love with. After Vittoria bought the boat, the dock started to seem like the Reform Club with neon lights, and Vittoria’s face had a hint of something Indian and, at heart, regal.

She was a strong female figure in the town with her boat etc!

As I said, this was inspired by Simenon; it is a mystery in a way he did his mystery in his roman durs, more about the flaws in the human condition and places. So this is more an insight into the small seaside town of Scauri. Those living there there interactions with her, but also the relationships and thoughts of her. Then we need to know how this dead woman ended up in the town all those years ago!  The seaside town is set in the middle between Rome and Naples, at the remote end of the seaside towns of the area. So when Vittoria, the local chemist, herbalist and all-around woman that everyone knows in this small town, is found dead, drowned in her bath. Lea, the local lawyer, sets about finding out about this woman. She had been in the village for nearly thirty years, but was one of those women everyone turned to. She listened as others poured their hearts out to her. She lived in a villa with Maras, making her herbal recipes, helping people make amazing recoveries from various illnesses over the years. How could a woman who swam every day and was an expert with her boat drown in a bath? Who was this woman? Will Lea learn more after chatting to all the locals about her? Why does she want to know more about her?

Vittoria might have become one of those healers you find in little towns who apparently have no skill or purpose but live alongside nature, and not just humans. Despite everyone always asking her all sorts of things, and her real intuition for diagnosis, she had never wanted to be one. She seemed to live a quiet life, staying in the pharmacy for the hours she had to, then spending the rest of her time walking, swimming, reading botanical books, and tending the garden. She liked having people around the house and playing cards. I’m interested in both earthly and heavenly plants, she would say, laughing.

But she was much more than that to this town!

This is one of those books that feels like a crime novel but without a detective. It is about small towns and how unsettling a death out of the blue can be, and how someone can fit into a town without anyone ever really knowing who she was! WEho was Vittoria whart had brought her from Rome all those years earlier it focus on those little bonds and tyies that weave together a small town but also how at the heart there could be a black hole of a person that seems to be at the heart of it all but is actually more invisible to those around her for the fact she only listen to those and on the surface was the woman everyone. She was known for her job and her ability to heal people, but what was her past? I get how this was inspired by Simenon; he was great with the ambiguity of human nature, those grey characters in life never black or white. This is about small town relationships and passions, and also that never quite trusting the incomer, even thirty years later! Do you have a favourite novel that is a crime novel, but isn’t, if that makes sense like this?

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

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Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

Italian fiction

Original title – Le Perfezoni

Translator – Sophie Hughes

Source – Subscription copy

Now one thing we can always count on is a book from Faaitzcarraldo =being on the booker longlist, Well you hope there is asa they are bring out the cutting edge of fiction from around the world and yes they have a clever knack of having published future noble winners and may continue with that lets see, So this maybe wasn’t the book from there recent books that people had picked for the longlist. But for me, it is a perfect book for the way the Booker Prize is moving, it is the tale of some millennials, social media, and life in general. It captures how the world has shrunk and, in many ways, is a very similar world we all live in now.

The kitchen is fitted out with glossy white subway tiles, a chunky wooden worktop, a double butler’s sink.

Open shelves are lined with blue and white enamel dishes and mason jars filled with rice, grains, coffee, spices. Cast-iron pans and olive wood ladles hang from a wall-mounted steel bar. Out on display on the worktop are a brushed steel kettle, a Japanese teapot and a bright red blender. The windowsill is filled with herbs growing in terracotta pots: basil, mint, chives, but also marjoram, winter savory, coriander, dill. Pushed against one wall is an antique marble-top pastry table and salvaged school chairs

This made me laugh as it remind me of some many oictures coffee shops etc I have seen with a similar vibe and style

The book follows Anne and Tom as they live out that expat dream of living in Berlin (I, for one, had shared this dream as well; I had lived in Germany but would have loved to have been in the post-wall era Berlin). What is captured in the modern world, a new take at the start of the book, is a nod to a book by George Perec in the sixties, when the first explosion of consumerism happened, when things price-wise became within the grasp of many people. Well, this is maybe the 2020s version of how social media has taken over the world. Instagram, Pinterest, etc. So we all have plant-filled apartments with similar posters and art, with Gooseneck kettles and V60  with filters to make the perfect pour over. The local coffee roasters. But this world is also ideal, and as they see those around them come and go, they start to lose the love of this world, and what to replace it with. They start to do something which too few people do these days, and become political and try slowly, but over time, become more radical in the steps they take to make the world around them more real. This is about the modern dream, those filtered pictures. Those idolised lives.

And it is a happy life, or so it seems from the pictures in the post advertising the apartment for short-term rental at one hundred and eighteen euros a day, plus the fee to cover the Ukrainian cleaner, paid through a French gig economy company that files its taxes in Ireland; plus the commission for the online hosting platform, with offices in California but tax-registered in the Netherlands; plus another cut for the online payments system, which has its headquarters in Seattle but runs its European subsidiary out of Luxembourg; plus the city tax imposed by Berlin.

I’ve looked on Air BnB to see how long a mon ths rent here and there would cost.If I had the time and money !

I am old enough to be from the pre-social media generation. Social media waves have come and go in the last couple of decades. Like Fury in the slaughterhouse said in the song, every generation has its disease or in this case, social media. This is the Instagram world of perfect clips and how it affects one couple, but also shows the hollow nature of these dreams and worlds. Berlin was the ideal choice, it is a hipster place to live, always has been. For Nick Cave or even Lou Reed before him. Through to a singer like Lloyd Cole, who also wrote a song about how hip Berlin was back in the day. Anne and Tom could be any couple on social media. But the main thing around this book is that the writer is George Orwell’s Italian Translator, and this is a sort of Orwellian tale of the modern world and how all that shines isn’t what it seems. A great picture has a story behind it every time! I am someone who spends a lot less time on social media than I did a decade ago. I know the feeling of losing who you are somewhat. But for me, social media also opened doors. What is your take on this novella? It is one of the most interesting books on the longlist so far !

Last summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich

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Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich

Italian fiction

Original title –  L’ultima estate in città

Translator – Howard Curtis

Source – Personal copy

I am always wary of the translated book that is a summer success. A beach reads a book you see on the list of books to read and the end-of-year list. I am wary as they often seem to be more commercial fiction but I had see this and that when he wrote it one of the writers that championed his cause was Natalia Ginzburg, a writer whose books I have loved, and I thought, yes, it may be popular but it is a book about Rome in the summer what is not to like9I’ve never been to Rome, I am the original armchair traveller in my reading ). He then chose to go into Film and television screenwriting. He published short stories many years later with much acclaim. The time of this book varies I had it done as a book from 1970 and over place it mention 1073, I’m assuming he wrote it in 1970 and it maybe came out on a broader audience in 1973. I can see him being a screenwriter. This book is rich in place and character that it would easily make a film as we follow Leo.

The wind was rising by the time I got to an apartment block surrounded by a damp, rustling garden. It was only then, perhaps because of the smell of the wet earth, that it occurred to me I should have brought Viola some flowers, but it was too late now, and I was so hungry I could barely stand. So I kept on, confronting the final test, an elevator that throughout the ride up emitted a menacing drone, as if complaining about my weight. Reaching the third floor, I quickly tidied my hair and rang the doorbell. Viola appeared. She looked surprised. Before I could say anything, she let out a little hiccup and burst into irrepressible laughter. I must have looked like a flood victim to her. “Come in, Leo,” she said, taking me by the arm. “God, how happy I am to see you. How did you manage to find us?”

As I say he capture the feel of the city well in the book

The book focuses on summer and our main character, Leo, as he has left his home in Milan and headed to Rome. He hangs out in Rome with a friend who is a drunkard but has a rich American wife . Leo has an air about him. He wants to live the high life but is failing a man who wants to be more than his parts (don’t we all, though). But Rome isn’t Milan; the summer is there, and he is struggling. He has friends who help him sell him an old ALFA, which adds to his wanting to be a specific type of man in the eyes of others. He then meets Arriane, a woman who, in the way she is described, feels a little like Italian Lucy Honeychurch. The two fall for each other, but it is that deep spark of flying love that either caries on and smoulders or dies. This is a case of the latter as we see the fall rise and ultimately the fall of Leo over one summer in Rome.

The city was caressing us. Gradually, it became less difficult to think about Arianna. Basically, nothing irreparable had happened, Nothing irreparable ever happened in this city — sad things, maybe, but not irreparable ones. And anyway, if I was going to leave town, I wanted to see her. At this hour, she must be in Eva’s store, playing solitaire.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, I said. “I know some people nearby who could offer us a drink.”

“Leftovers” he said, “nothing but leftovers.”

Graziano pulled himself to his feet and followed me up the steps until we got to Trinità dei Monti, then we took the street that went downhill, leading to Eva’s store. We climbed the front steps, holding on to the railing, then pushed the glass door. A bell rang as it opened. The humorist was there reading something aloud, along with the fashion model, Livio Stresa, and Paolo, that journalist with the special way with women, sitting next to Arianna. I was greeted as if it were the most natural thing in the world for me to be joining them.

He is so caught by the Arianna

This has the feel of a classic story from maybe years before it came out. It did for me anyway. Hence  It is compared to Catch in the Rye and Great Gatsby, but neither is near the mark. This is the flip of Ginzburg. It is a male view of those years in the late seventies in Roma, with glamour and darkness, and we see both in this book. For me, Leo has wandered of a Tom Waits song or some other ballader of those men that have broken dreams. If Waits was Italian, would he write a song called “A Letter from a Friend in Rome ?”A man who wants to be in with the crowd but never is fully in the crowd. The other character in the book is the city in the summer and how it is to be in Rome when you are just another face in the crowd. Jacqui said she found it evocative and atmospheric. It has that it captures a place and a type of man. The sort of fallen man on the edge of Wodehouse novels or a side figure in Waugh, if that makes sense. Not quite in the money but likes to think he can be, and then he finds love, but even that ends up flawed. A flawed summer of a flawed man? A nice third stop on this week’s 1970 club!

 

Your Little Matter by Maria Grazia Calandrione

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Your Little Matter by Maria Grazia Calandrone

Italian Memoir

Original title –  Dove Non Mi Hai Portata

Translator- Antonella Lettieri

Source – Personal copy

I saw Foundry editions online and ordered their first three books as they appealed to me. They are doing books from around the Mediterranean as reflected in each of the cover designs for each book reflects some from each country’s culture. This book is from the Italian writer Maria Grazia Calandrone. An Italian poet, journalist and tv host. She also works with prisoners and schoolchildren doing poetry workshops. This is her fist book to be translated to English, The book was a huge hit when it came out in Italuy and won prizes and spent weeks on the bestseller lists. In a way this is a book about those poor woman in Italy that haven’t ever had a voice people like Maria own Birth mother this is her story and how as a baby at 8 months she was abandon at the Vila Borghese by her mother. She was adopted and has written another book about her adoptive mother, but this is the story of Lucia and what brought her to abandon and then take her own life.

Of my mother, I only have two black and white photo-graphs.

Apart, of course, from my own life and some biological memories that I’m not sure I can tell apart from suggestion and myth.

I am writing this book so that my mother might become real.

I am writing this book to tear my mother’s smell from the earth. I am exploring a method for those who have lost their origins, a mathematical system of feeling and thought – so complete as to revive a body, as hot as the earth in summer and as firm.

I am starting from what I have, the two photographs that portray her, in the order in which they appeared in my life.

The first

was taken on her wedding day, Saturday, 17 January

1959. Lucia is twenty-two, she is dressed all in white and she is not smiling.

The starting point is two old b&w pictures of her Mother

Maria sets about trying to find out more about her mother and her birth father to piece together the bits. What she does is build up a tale in little vignettes of how Lucia, her mother. A woman did something not many women did in those years as it was illegal. Divorce was illegal. Even leaving the marital home would have meant she was sent to Jasil, so she left her parents-in-law when she did all this. Her marital bed was separated from the in-laws bed by a white cotton sheet. This is a hard rural side of Italy, where the world hadn’t changed, and Lucia had left and fallen for an older married man. Although imperfect, everything is broken when this Builder, Guiseppe, has to go to Africa as Il Duce fought for his piece of Africa. So she finds her self on the run with a child a partner hundreds of m, miles away. She tried to defy all around them by setting up a home together, but with him gone, the world around her fell apart. It is almost as if Maria looked at her mother and those times. The doors were all closed as her world dropped into despair. Shwe uncovers the fallen woman’s story of the country that hid or, just like this, let these women suffer and die.

When they betroth her, Lucia runs away. Luigi, her fiancé, is the village buffoon; they call him Gino or Centolire: like the emigrant in that old song, he too is infected with a childish American dream, even though he is a thirty-one-year-old bachelor lost in his inner world. Who knows what kind of elsewhere Luigi dreams of, what kind of life inconceivable here… He certainly has no interest in women, he is the laughing stock of the village children:

“You’re not a real man!”

However, he owns the piece of land next to the Galantes.

Tall and lanky to the point that, when he rides his donkey, his feet drag on the ground, he is a handsome man with sharp features and a chiselled jaw. Gino went to school until the end of third year and rumour has it that he is completely henpecked by his mother and sister

Her Husband Luigi and his family were to much for her

I absolutely loved this book; it is heartwrenching and opening and follows Maria’s journey to discover their mother. She never knew her Father and didn’t know how they met her mother’s life in the village. It is also an account of other women like her mother who have no one to tell their stories of being marginalized in a country where divorce is banned and even living separate lives isn’t allowed. This is a perfect example of why I like small presses. Yes, this was a best seller in Italy, but it had not been picked up by a relatable story. We heard of many an abandoned baby many years ago. This fills in what happened after but also what can lead a parent to do that act. Then take their own life, she drowns; Maria seven finds out how she’d looked after this and how the body blows up with gas in the water. I like the vignette style of the book as she pieced the stories of her family bit by bit over time, and everyone she met told her a little more from the pictures in the book as well. Have you ever read a book about an abandoned baby or their mother?

Family and Borghesia by Natalia Ginzburg

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Family and Borghesia by Natalia Ginzburg

Italian fiction

Original title – Famiglia was Family’s title 

Translator – Beryl Stockman

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to get sent a copy from Daunt Books of the latest reissue of books by Natalia Ginzburg. I have reviewed three of her other books. So these two short novellas are the latest of her books to be brought back out. Ginzburg won the Strega prize in her lifetime, and she was also a member of the Italian Parliament when she was younger. According to Saint Mathew, She also starred in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film The Gospel. She was considered one of the leading Anti-fascists of her time and was a member of the Italian communist party. These two stories show her ability to look inside the soul and heart of her characters.

The woman was called Ilaria Boschivo. She had been a widow for several years. She was thin and wrinkled with short, woolly grey hair and big blue eyes. She lived alone.

Her daughter and son-in-law lived in the flat next door, and her brother-in-law, Pietro Boschivo, in the flat above.

Pietro Boschivo was an antiques dealer and provided for them all. He was the brother of her late husband, Giovanni Boschivo, a theatrical impresario. A winding staircase separated his flat from hers. Her daughter and son-in-law, who were both eighteen, usually had their meals with her as they had no money and no desire to cook. The daughter was called Aurora and the son-in-law Aldo, his surname being Palermo. Ilaria and her old servant, Cettina, always did the cooking together.

The widow and her cat she does a lot for those in the house.

Family, the main story in this collection, follows a couple who were together until they tragically lost a child. Architect Carmine has moved on when he meets his ex-wife, his new wife, Ninetta. He had studied abroad after Ivana, and he had lost their child, so when they meet, Newton’s cradle-like effect starts on the two of them. What might have been in their lives without that one tragic event in their lives? Eventually, the old flames start hanging out with his ex, and Ninetta is initially ok, but then she changes as the two seem closer. That bond of a lost child is there as we see their past. Carmine had dragged himself up Ivana, a translator on the look for her next ob most of the time. It looks at the ebb and flow of relationships that might have been in people’s lives. Next is another tale looking character. This time, in Borghesia, we have a widow, Ilaria, who is given a kitten. Still, a series of misadventures see her having some similar cats in quick succession as she is living with her brother-in-law and his child. She is like a live-in housekeeper. She connects to the cats, but then as we see what happens to the cat, the events in the house are taking a darker turn.

There were a lot of people with cats and dogs in the vet’s waiting room. Several hours passed by. She spoke to a woman sitting near her, who had an enormous dog on a lead.
‘This is the first time I’ve been here,’ she said. ‘Yes, I can tell you’ve never had an animal before,’ said the woman. Ilaria was struck by this and wondered how the woman could tell.
Perhaps it was the fact that her cat was wrapped in a shawl.
Everyone else had theirs in suitable pagoda-shaped baskets, so convenient for travelling or for taking them to the vet.
That day, she felt as if she had truly penetrated the circle of pet owners and animal lovers, a very special group of people united by a tenuous and yet extremely close bond.

She becomes a pet lover.

I love her style of writing. It is clear and gets to the heart of her character. I was reminded that Jhumpa Lahiri is a fan, in fact, when I read both of her books since she has been living in Rome, and she had included Ginzburg in her ten great Italian stories collection. Both writers are great at human insight, but Ginzburg is also sparse in her writing, and I can see this has now gone into Lahiri’s books. In the first novella, Family captures those what-if moments in life but also regrets shared loss and lives as class and Italian life. Also, how we move on after an event like the death of the first child. How in the son he knows Carmine has not been happy, and maybe he wonders what the first child would have been like. The second tale is sometimes darker as we see cats come and go, but also how the cats in the family home affect all those around Ilaria. These tales look into the heart of families, those little everyday things that makeup life. Have you a favourite book by her?

Winston’s score—A: The aftermath of a breakup and the loss of a child are looked at. Why do the cats keep dying in this house?

The House on Via Gemito by Domeico Starnone

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The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone

Italian Fiction

Original title – Via Gemito

Translator – Oonagh Stransky

Source – Review copy

When the longlist was announced for the Booker International this year, I wished I HAD FINISHED THIS BOOK. I am a reader who sometimes struggles with books over 400 pages these days as I haven’t always had the patience to get through a long book. So I had asked for this as Starnone from the lovely publicist at Europa as it appealed to me. He is often thought as a possible name for that question that crops up an lot who is Elena Ferrante, as he lives and has spent most of his life in Naples. But his wife is also considered another writer who could be her. So this is one OI had wanted to read. But when I started reading this book last year, it wasn’t grabbing me. I just maybe wasn’t in the mood for it, even when. In reading it this time, it may need a closer, slower reading. But I liked the world he painted of Fwedrfi and his dreams of being a painter

Because, although he was a railroader, he thought about nothing but the exhibition he was preparing. And indeed, when he was good and ready, he came home, shut himself in, told the station that he had rheumatic fever, gastritis, or any number of other ailments, and spent his time painting line signals, junc-tions, sidetracks, cattle cars, railyards, depots, and railheads. I remember each and every one of his paintings: my grandmother, brothers, and I slept in the same room where he painted, the dining room, where his monumental easel stood surrounded by his paintbox and canvases. I used to fall asleep staring at those visions, they seemed beautiful to me; I wish I could find them.

The apartment and his dads world

The t tile refers to the small APartment in which Fedri is a railway clerk. But he is also a dreamer who dreams. He is the lost artist just waiting to be discovered. A man sat at times driven to get his dream, but along with this, this is the violence and effect of a man set on the dream of being a painter. The book’s first part is told from the point of view of his son Mimi and the -pressure of living with a man whose dream will never happen you feel. What we also get along in the family saga is the city itself. In his Porse, Starnoine paints the town if only his character was as good with his brush as his prose. He is a man who is trying, alongside his painting, to climb the ladder of being a rail worker. This is a man drawn to drink but also a man that had a lost dream and we see that it is at heart the story of a father and son and the Naples of the post world war two era. Fathers and sons do not want to be their fathers. This story is partly based on the writer’s own life. But Mimi hopes for his father to be seen and gain his dreams to make him happier than the drinking bully he is.

My days in Naples flew by. At night I scribbled down a mess of notes and kept saying to myself, tomorrow I’ll go look for The Drinkers. But then the following morning I’d wake up and change my mind: today I want to go back to Via Gemito, to see that railroad-owned building where we lived, and the window that my father looked out of while he painted.

The metro station was less than a hundred meters from my brother’s house. It was easy: all I had to do was descend into the abyss, with its pleasant grey walls and yellow handrails, its red bricks and the smooth black rubber pavement that smelled new, like everything down there, get on the first train, and get off at Piazza Medaglie d’Oro. From there, one morning, I strolled idly to Piazza Antignano, and observed the dilapidated old buildings,loitered aroun the market, no difference after all these years, and slowly made my way to Via Gemito

Naples a;ways in the bacground of the story

There has been an undercurrent of Autofiction in this year’s longlist. This book loosely uses part of Starnone’s childhood. His father was a mildly successful painter. One of his paintings was called The Drinkers, like a painting in the book. This is a son looking back and rewriting his childhood. His working-class father was a tough man who had boxed and was harsh on his son. This is also full of the same city we love from Ferrante. Naples is a place that seems to have a culture of its own whenever I read about it! This made our shortlist but hadn’t gone further in the Booker longlist. Which is a shame I maybe marked it Harshly in our own shortlist scoring round, I just have a feeling I have read it nearly twice I was about halfway through last year and have read it all this year and still it hasn’t grabbed me as I hoped. But if you like a working-class male take on the same city as Ferrante and her characters live in, this is the book for you! Do you ever as a reader have this feeling when you have read a book? I will try his books again. I have a couple on my shelves to read. Have you liked any of his other books ?

Winston’s score – B great in parts, but it just didn’t fully connect with this book

Lost on me by Veronica Raimo

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Lost on me by Veronica Raimo

Italian fiction

Original title –Niente di vero

Translator – Leah Janeczko

Source – Personal copy

Veronica Raimo grew up in Rome. She studied German cinema at university and has lived in Berlin since earning her degree. She has translated books from English into Italian and also written for a number of magazines, including Rolling Stone La Repubblica and Corriere Della Sera. She has had several novels and short story collections out. This is her second book to be translated into English. Her brother is also a writer Christian, but it hasn’t yet been translated into English. This on paper when I read the blurbs around the books on the International Booker longlist appealed. I am a Fan of coming-of-age books. I like books that use vignettes as a style of writing. So I was eager to read this and had placed it on the list of books as a break from a couple I wasn’t sure about.

My short-term plan was to take the train to Fiumicino Airport so I could say goodbye to Za— the boy I was dating-who was leaving for Ireland. This was back when Ireland was all the rage and spending three weeks surrounded by drab little towns, the countryside, drizzle, dark beer, and shitty music seemed like something to experience.

It was the first real goodbye in my life. To be perfectly honest, I’d been building up to that moment in my mind since the day we started going out. In fact, I think that was exactly why I started dating him in the first place: so we could leave each other. The thought that hed be leaving the country soon ensured me a misery I could enjoy without the hassle of having to go out and find one myself.

I connected with this as a kid I hitched the length of  england a few times just trying to escape my family life.

Vero is the narrator of our story. She, like the writer herself, has grown up in Rome. The book as I said is told in Vignettes. In fact, it happens that most of the material started as part of a stand-up routine she used to do. I get that from recollections like when she was four, knowing all the Juventas players, we all had little odd things as a kid we could do. Her mother may be a typical helicopter parent constantly wanting contact with her children. Then her father remind me a bit of my stepfather, another day man, but that never quite finishes what he started. Many odd childhood events make you see this as a little tongue-in-cheek and a writer who remembers those funny moments so well. Then I loved the change from Child to adult as she headed out in the world. Like myeself she had spent time in Germany ok she was in Berlin and i was in the small town Kleve. But that first feeling of mishaps and sexual awakenings. The loss of her father reminds me of the loss of my Mum. There is a time when she is turning 40, she wants to let her know, and I have so often wanted to do this since I lost my mum’s mothers and sons and for her Father and daughters.

I love living in other peoples homes. Discovering their books, their records, their sex toys, the orgasms of their neighbors, using their shampoo, drinking espresso from their cups. That sense of alienation that makes me feel like myself. Unlike the saying about the devil and his pots, I’ve always taken “Try putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” literally. I feel good in other peoples shoes, in other people’s clothes. I open unfamiliar wardrobes and slip on whatever’s there. I look at my reflection in the mirror and recognize myself.

Don’t we all love this having a look at other shelves and flipping through their records.

I initially put this down and felt a little underwhelmed, but since I read it, I have a chuckle at this bit and that bit of the book. I realised I actually loved parts of it and the wry humour. In hidsight would be suited for a radio comedy I felt it suit that style as a book it works but this ios a wiork that needs to be spoken and read in a way to fully grab the humour underlying it at times. I get why it is  compared to Fleabag it has a similar humour that shows a rebellious young woman in a way that is a fresh character in fiction we’ve had to many young guys it makes a change to read this sort of coming of age with a female voice at the centre of the book (I’m know thinking god I sound old !) Have you read this or any other books with interesting female narrators at the heart?

Winstons score B solid fun book would like to listen to this as audio imagine the humour would come over more than in my voice if that makes sense

 

The city of the living by Nicola Lagioia

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The City of the Living by Nicol Lagioa

Italian non-fiction

Original title -La città dei vivi

Translator – Ann Goldstein

Source – review copy

I was sent this after I reviewed another true crime work from Europa Daniella wonder what my taker one this would be as it is very different from The missing word that Europa had all brought out. This is a work from one of the best current writers in Italy Nicola Lagioia had started out studying law but then became an editor and ghostwriter. He eventually published his first novel in 2001  this is his fifth novel I would have called it a non-fiction novel but it is about a violent crime where two young men tortured and killed another man on the outskirts on Rome the sheer violence of the crime and the people involved sent shockwaves through Rome what he does here is try to take apart the three lives at the centre of the crime.

MF: Let’s meet at 11.00 at my house? You’ll get the stuff? I’ll pay you back, obviously.

MP: I thought you’d take care of everything tonight. This time I can’t spend and the other time it was 7 or 8 hundred.

MF: O.K., but I can’t spend more than 150.

MP: Give me the address again.

MF: Via Igino Giordani 2. When you’re there call me.

WhatsApp exchange between Manuel Foffo and Marco Prato three days before the murder.

The message leading up to the crime between the two killers

Luca Varani was a mechanic but how  he got involved and end up dead at the hands of these young men THEY had initially hired him as he was a male prostitute on the side and were going to rape him. But then events got w=twisted. But that all happens later in the book. This is a story that lifts the lid on modern culture the world of social media and how one appears online. It is about how we identify ourselves sexually these days in an ever changing world of views and how we live. The two killers are a successful events manager Manuel Boffo and his mate a uni dropout and maybe the most troubled character in this story, Marco Prato. Boffo is a straight male his friend is a crossdresser and bi but the book digs into the three characters’ life Luca the victim had been in a relationship and had this secret Whart he does is get to the heart of the families and friends of the three men and looks at what brought them to this horrific crime. How they are bent and twisted by class and the society they live in and how this act is like a sudden burst of pent-up violence built up over the years. He talks with one of the killers. this is how in one of the most beautiful cities in the world there is a darker side to those living there.

 

Crimes of this type, in which the accomplices hadn’t known each other for long, almost all followed the same outline. Not three, not five, not eight. Two was the recurring number. A dominator and a dominated. A manipulated and a manipulator, even if the roles were often interchangeable. It was a matter of individuals who, on their own, were unlikely to have committed the crime for which they ended up in jail almost without realizing it. We weren’t dealing with serial killers. In theory, they were normal people.

“But in the end what is the truth about Luca Varani’s private life? And Foffo’s and Prato’s?”

Yes the real lives of these three is at the heart of this book

Lagioia has hosted a podcast around this crime. This book it is a work of fiction as some parts he has painted in the gaps of what happened. But yes it is hard not to think of Truman Capote, but for me, there was a little bit of a writer like Irvine Welsh here in that darker side of life of being young in the modern world and the violence drugs and aggression that can bring the crime is shocking and the two men at the heart of it just don’t seem the sort to do this horrific killing and I think that is where the book is at it’s best as he goes into the characters the past story of the three. But also the darker underbelly of the city like a Dutch tourist looking for a child. I can see this crime making a great podcast as it is just asks much about the world of social media and image, sexual expression and identity this book is maybe the cream of that podcast taken of the top. I found it interesting and horrific to read but it also lifted the lid on a crime I hadn’t heard of a level of violence with two killers that brought back thoughts of the moors killers to me growing up in the north-west their ghost their crimes where still raw when I was a kid and this is another crime that shocks a city. Have you read this book or heard of this crime ?

Winston’s score – A , a shocking crime looked at in depth and picked apart to get to the heart of why but it becomes a blur of reasons.

 

Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

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Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

Italian fiction

Original title – Valentino

Translator – Avril Bardoni

Source – Personal copy

Well, I had intended to post a Czech book today, but do you ever have that situation where you read a book and want to straight away read it again well I had that yesterday. I usually have a coffee and sit and read an hour before work after dropping Amanda off at work. Yesterday I decided to take this having just written up the books I got from Holiday and I felt this was a perfect choice at 60 pages there was a good chance I would finish it in one sitting. I have read The Little Virtues and Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg before so I pick this uo when I was away and was just blown away by it.

My sister had never believed that Valentino was destined to become a man of consequence. She couldn’t stand him and pulled a face every time his name was mentioned, remembering all the money my father spent on his education while she was forced to type addresses. Because of this, my mother had never told her about the skiing outfit and whenever my sister came to our house one of us had to rush to his room and make sure that these clothes and any other new things that he had bought for himself were out of sight.

Early on she reveals her sisters view on her brother.

The book follows a number of years in a poor middle-class family we have Caterina one of the sisters to Valentino he is the apple of the eye of the family his mother and father have saved to get him an education as a doctor. His father had been a schoolteacher; later, this is also the job Caterina and the mother help out with piano lessons. So when he is treasured by his parents, but as his sister describes him he is maybe a little lazy at his studies Valentino announces out of the blue he has a fiancé and they are marrying the family thinks he will turn up with some Beauty also when this plain older woman with her tortoiseshell glasses turn upon the family don’t know what to do. They say the father’s heart is weak so Mother talks to them as they wonder why Valentino has picked Maddalena as his wife she has land and money but she is so different to who they pictured their precious son marrying. They do marry and the book then goes forward through the years and have children then a cousin of Maddalean turns up Kit a tall balding man who captures the eye of our narrator but will the couple stick together what is going on between Kit and Valentino.

‘He’s gone home to bed. Here are your gloves,’ I said and tossed them to him. ‘But aren’t you a bit past Mysteries of the Black Jungle?’
‘Stop talking like a schoolmistress,” he replied.
‘I am a schoolmistress,’ I said.
‘I know; but you needn’t talk like one to me?’ My supper had been left on a side table in the sitting room and I sat down to eat. Valentino went on reading.
When I had finished my meal I sat on the settee next to him. I put my hand on his head. He frowned and muttered something under his breath without raising his eyes from the book.

I laughed when he said the schoolmistress line to his sister.

This is a lifetime in 60 pages the course of a marriage the dreams of one generation to the next one. They want Valentino as the father says to be a man of consequence but he is far from that  This is all told in a dry tone by the narrator and there is a sense she knows her brother isn’t as great as the parents feel he is or could be. It is also about class and the difference between Maddalena, her cousin Kit, and the in-laws. Such as when they marry straight away to replace the furniture in the lounge. The book sees the parents die rather quickly after one another. The other sister struggles with her children and our narrator the spinster sister. I loved this slice of a family’s life. Caterina then lives with her brother after the los of her parents and there is a line where Valentino turns to her and says you sound like a schoolteacher she says I am a schoolteacher reminds me of my own gran who was a headmistress. it is fair to say I will be getting the other Ginzburg from Daunt books or seeing if my library has any. But for Italian fiction, my best book is  NYRB classics that Ginzburg rated Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morrante is an epic book. Have you read books by Ginzburg or Morrante?

Winston score – A small gem of a book seems much more than its slim size.

 

The Missing word by Concita De Gregorio

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The Missing Word by Concita De Gregorio

Italian Fiction

Original title -Mi sa che fuori è primavera

Translator – Clarissa Botsford

Source – Library

I love it when I go to the library and find a gem like this that had passed me by I even get sent the Europa Catalogue and I nit sure how this had passed me by when I looked at it in the library I was grabbed by the mention of Truman Capote’s in cold blood a book I think is maybe the best true crime book as it is the original in many ways. Also by the story behind the book. Concita De Gregorio is a successful Journalist and editor she has hosted an arts and culture show on tv as well. The book is based on the real-life disappearance of twins and she worked with her mother to write this novel of the mother’s story and the loss of her twins.

Dearest Nonna, I’m leaving for Patagonia with Luis next Sunday. We’re going whale watching. Trekking, climbing to the top of the mountains, walking deep into the woods, sitting at the ocean shore all make me feel happy. Minuscule and at peace. Luis makes me feel happy.I’ll introduce him to you one day, I’d love to. You’ll like him. He has eves that laugh and big hands. He can create silence when it’s needed, and then he chooses his words, picks them out, and stitches them together like embroidery. Did I tell you his job is to make cartoons for kids? They’re magical. Did I tell you what he did when I rejected him at first? He gave me an incredible gift, something straight out of a film. I need to look into your sky-blue eyes to tell you, though: I want to see your shy smile while I describe the scene. It’ll be wonderful.

She escapes to South America and writes to her Gran here

Now I consider myself to know snippets of the news from around Europe not everything but have an idea what is going on here and there. So I was surprised that this case and series of events had passed me The story is of the disappearance of Alessia and Livia two twins that had been on a weekend away with their father their parents had split but still lived in the same village. He had taken his daughters away for the weekend and had travelled to Corsica and then threw himself under a train the events of the few days before he is seen with the girls texted his ex-wife. Later he sends a postcard but then when he takes his life the children are nowhere to be seen and this is where the book starts it is Irina the mother of the twins story about how she copes after and is made up of her personal thoughts and letters with her grandmother. her writing to find out of the therapist he had seen but he won’t say anything to her. Then request the girl’s school work . Her journey to find herself after this earth-shattering event. She say late on she didn’t want any more children she is a mother and will always be a mother but she then said how few languages have a word for this happening a mother that has lost there children. This is a heartbreaking tale told with real beauty in the prose.

The missing word

Parents who lose children. Who don’t murder them but lose them. What are they called, how do you say it, who is someone whose child has died? What place do they occupy in history? Missing word, missing word, missing absent. Who eliminated it? When? From all the Italian, French, German, Spanish and English dictionaries. And why?

There is words in other languages Shakol in Hebrew, but I wonder why this word doesn’t exist !!

I am a fan of true-life movies it is one of the few films Amanda and I tend to both enjoy. This book is heart-wrenching but also shows how strong Irina was after all this had happened to her. She was thrust in the spotlight after this had happened and had to escape travel to find herself and meet people that didn’t know her as the mother of the twins. I liked the mixture of styles from personal narrative, list letters. I feel it works as a novel as she has maybe changed things a little. But it still has the power of what happened Irina copes with this event that could have pushed her over the edge and even in the end is a strong voice for the charity Missing Children  Switzerland. AS I said I don’t know how this passed me by as it is such an intense tale of what is a horrific act and aftermath. Have you read this book ?

Winston’s score +a just needs to be read such a powerful work from such a sad true life event.

The performance by Claudia Petrucci

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The Performance by Claudia Petrucci

Italian fiction

Original title – l’esercito

Source – Review copy

MY fourth book for this women in translation month sees us with another triangle like yesterday but this is a love triangle, Claudia Petrucci studied in Milan and then went to live in Perth in  Australia. Her short fiction and reportage have ranged from being realistic to experimental to science fiction. She has been published in a number of publications and has won a prize for being one of the best Italian writers under 30. This is her debut novel. Now this is a book I started last year then I put it on the side and never got back to it even thou I was enjoying it. I do love a great love triangle in a novel but this book has a darker edge to it.

Giorgia and I say goodbye to each other at the door and our last day branches off in separate directions.She lingers in the bathroom, and under the hot jet of the shower, stares at the little boy’s silhouette that appears in shadow beyond the glass. He is unusually quiet but always close by, and doesn’t leave her side; He clings to the sleeve of her bathrobe while she dries her hair. They go out together, there’s no seat on the tram, He sits on her lap.

Empty theaters carry the promise of infinite space.When the lights are off and the seats unoccupied, the dark rear depths dissolve, creating the illusion that they continue on. Giorgia likes to think that, if she wanted to, she could explore the theater for eternity, settle among the orchestra seats awaiting no one. Only when vacant, deprived of its function, does the theater show itself for what it really is an escape, an imaginary realm-and yet here, only here and nowhere else are they able to exist.

There is even her early in the book a sense of something !

The book has a usual story of a woman that had been close with one man and they had parted when she was young and she had settled down with another man and as she has done this her dreams and career had taken a back burner. So the woman in question Giorgia happens one day to bump into Mauro a man that had a flame for her and was in the theatre world she used to be in before she had settled down with her current lover Flippo and given up on her stage career. So when Mauro tries not to get her to come back on the stage and fans the flames of her hidden desire to get back on the stage we feel the book is going one way but when Gigia has some sort of mental health breakdown and is section and ends up in a clinic the two men life course is changed and now they have to try and help the woman they both love in the ways get back into the world after this massive breakdown. But as the two lovers try to help her get back into the world the lines between their love and controlling this fragile soul as it becomes about winning her back not but not her as a person

Mauro subjects me to a strict discipline. We enter the month of December with the days of the week organized by activities: he’s established a program that allows very few deviations. At set times- from seven to eight, Monday to Thursday, eleven to one on Saturdays I have to write. I start writing under his supervision, at his house, with him urging me on when I think I can’t do it. The first pages are full of just adjectives, some have scrawls that I myself can’t make out.

At first Mauro is satisfied, then he imposes a more methodical form on me, he makes me work at his computer. When I have moments of disillusionment, he tells me to focus on the exercise, he assures me that soon it will become an automatic action- from some point on, he says, the characters will begin to move independently, and in my case it will be a matter of choosing where to have Giorgia move, which memory to have her inhabit:

The way they treat her is just wrong out love but wrong.

It is hard to find books that deal with mental health breakdown and this is one such at its heart is a woman strong and loved but under all that is fragile should of a person with some obvious issues that maybe meant she was great at acting as it masked her own issues in the past but the thought of returning to the mask of the stage and the added pressure it brought was just enough to flick that switch we all have!! I deal with people in crisis as a job we help keep them in mind community ok may patients have learning disabilities but mental health challenges and when people breakdown it is always the same I loved the insight into her breakdown but also how the two men tried to mend her but they weren’t they wanted her to be what she was and that will never happen a powerful debut novel from a writer that is willing to look at the darker side of relationships after an event like this. Have you read any books that deal with mental breakdowns?

Winston’s score – A  – This book is a stunning insight into a love triangle collapsing and then the lines being redrawn.

Impossible by Erri De Luca

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Impossible by Erri De Luca

Italian fiction

Original title – Impossible

Translator – N S Thompson

Source – Library book

This is the second book from the Italian De Luca. A writer that was called the writer of the decade by Corriere Della Sera. He had been, in his earlier life a left-wing activist, even after he had been very vocal about a particular train line that had been built and was sued for his comments around it. He has been writing since he was 20, when he published his first book. He has published nearly a book a year since then and is now in his seventies. He has had a few books translated into English. The other book I read by him was The Day before happiness around a Child, which shows a versatile writer. This latest book links to his own left-wing activism. A love of the mountains.

Q: Let’s start again from the beginning of that day, shall we? You don’t recognise the person in the photograph
I’ve shown you?
A: No, I don’t recognise him. I’m not good at faces and with good reason after so many years. I can only repeat what I’ve already said.
Q: Perhaps, but possibly you could add something you haven’t said before?
A: Perhaps, but this isn’t a friendly chat between passengers on a train. I’m being questioned by an examining magistrate in a pre-trial investigation. It’s your decision what to ask, mine to decide if I want to talk about a memory or not.

The opening lines of this book

The book works as a two-hander with a few side characters. An old man, a former left-wing activist, has been held after he and another man had set off to hike in the Dolomites. They weren’t together, but when one man returns, and the other dies, so the older man is held. We have the scenario for the book, a series of interviews between this man. A young up-and-coming magistrate sees this older man as the murderer of the other man initially; the story is told as thou the two men weren’t connected as the man is kept in solitary confinement. The first chat hadn’t the solicitor, but he is there for the rest. The novel is mainly in the form of questions and answers as the two men lock swords and the lawyer is in the background. As they set off that day for a walk in the hills, the two men appeared unconnected on their own hikes for that day. But they had been comrades many years ago. But we are getting the mountains as a character as the man talks around that day and the relationship and the falling out many years earlier between the two men. This is the basis of the younger magistrate thinking he is a killer. We also see the old man talking to his wife, adding a perspective on where he thinks he will get off. but as time goes on, his hope changes.

Sweetheart, I’m thinking of that photo you sent me at Christmas of you as a child. That rascal face of yours looking directly into the lens, decisive, sarcastic, triumphantly defiant. I started to smile and the smile wouldn’t leave my face. You were seven years old.
I don’t know when you’ll read this letter. For now I’m writing it to keep myself company with thoughts of the two of us being together.
The cell holding me for twenty-three hours a day is for solitary confinement, but I’m not isolating myself at all from you and what matters to me. I’ve lived in worse places. I have paper, a pen and time. I do gymnastics and go over everything i know by heart: songs, poems, proverbs

The old man talking to his wife about his time in jail initally

This is a powerful little book that reminds me of the best two-handers by, say  Harold Pinter plays, where throughout the novel, the initial tale changes and evolves as the two men that set out on that hike that day past connection is revealed. This is a story of Italy’s dark past, those violent years of the seventies when the two men were connected. This is also a nod to De Luca’s own left-wing past. It also shows how people view people involved in that time. It is also an ode to the mountains, which, given he had a protest around a rail line that went through this area, you can tell De Luca loves. I love the way he unfolds the interaction of the two characters during the interviews like a classic noir film interview as bit by bit it becomes clear it is a wholly   Have you read any books by him? I was also reminded of Lawrence’s poem The Mountain Lion for some reason a poem I have loved since my teens  ( It is published by Mountain lion press)

Winston’s score – B he seems the master of short books. Both books I have read have been Novellas, and lets hope we see more. He has a huge backlist.

 

The Dry Heart By Natalia Ginzburg

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The dry heart by Natalia Ginzburg

Italian fiction

Original title – È stato così

Translator – Frances Frenaye

Source – personal copy

I mentioned on Twitter I was struggling to finish and concentrate on reading books recently. So I decided when I was in Macclesfield the other day to look for a short novella that was from a writer I have enjoyed before as maybe a way to kick start my reading as I hadn’t finished any book for more than a week. So when I saw this from the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg which I’m sure I’ve seen this month around twitter of this book and others by her. she is one of those writers `I read and knew I would read everything I could get my hands on. Ginzburg, she worked for one of the best publishing houses in Italy. A publisher that had published the likes of Carlo and Primo  Levi, Cesare Pavese and Italo Calvino some of my favourite writers. Since she has been republished in the last few years she has had a revival and after reading this it is welcome to see people reading her.

‘TELL ME THE TRUTH, “I said.
What truth?’ he echoed. He was making a rapid sketch in his notebook and now he showed me what it was: a long, long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it
and himself leaning out of a window to wave a handkerchief.I shot him between the eyes.

He had asked me to give him something hot in a thermos bottle to take with him on his trip. I went into the kitchen, made some tea, put milk and sugar in it, screwed the top on tight, and went back into his study. It was then that he showed me the sketch, and I took the revolver out
of his desk drawer and shot him between the eyes. But for a long time already I had known that sooner or later I should do something of the sort.

The opening is also the end in a way of the relationship

The Dry heart it is told from the perspective of a wife. The book opens as she shoots him between the eyes as she puts it what follows is a sort of remembered version of their time together of her meeting and falling in love with Alberto. She met him one day in the cafe but from the first, there is a sense the relationship is one-sided he asks her about her but when she tries to discover. more about him he is evasive about his life.The two form a bond she likes his interest in what she sees as her boring life as a teacher. They get close but he is always at at a neutral place like cafes or by the river. But then it isn’t til something happens to his mother that she finally gets a glimpse behind Alberto’s facade when he greets her in a dishevelled state. This maybe makes them see him as more human. But she still senses there is a real sense of two souls that shouldn’t be together coming together. Ginzburg draws you into this relationship and how it started and then fell apart from the perspective of some caught in the car crash of a relationship told in a way it is subtly explained and drawn in

BEFORE WE WERE MARRIED, when we went for a walk or sat in a café, Alberto enjoyed my company even if he wasn’t in love with me. He went out of his way to call on me; yes, even if it was raining he never failed to come. He sketched my face in his notebook and listened to what I had to say.

But after we were married he didn’t sketch my face any more. He drew animals and trains, and when I asked him whether trains meant that he wanted to go away he only laughed and said no.

The changes after they marry are the start of the relationship crashing

As I said I wanted a writer that I had enjoyed and this was the case with Ginzburg I had read the little virtues I had thought it was only a couple of years ago it turns out it was four years ago at the time I knew I want to read another from her but hadn’t thought it be so long anyway this is a book that even thou written in 1947 shows the power of great writing as it feels as thou it was written yesterday. it shows the dynamics of relationships are the same. The narrator tells the relationship in a fragmented nature we see how she ends up at the end which is also the beginning of the book shooting Alberto. It shows how a relationship is built bit by bit but like if you build a house on the sand the house is never stable and won’t ever last and this is the case here you read between the lines of the relationship growing there are gaps which we see in this relationship as they get drawn together but even the narrator sees this herself but is in denial or maybe just wants to ignore the faults she sees this is maybe what I like most about the book the sense of human nature in it how blindly we move at times through the world especially those nears to use we sometimes miss the faults and Alberto is a man that has many. it6s the fly on the wall that looks at a relationship from the female perspective that even 75 years later sounds familiar. Have you read any books by Ginzburg if so which should I try next?

Winstons score – a – it is amazing how it is still relevant and reads as thou not was written yesterday.

Contempt by Alberto Moravia

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Contempt by Alberto Moravia

Italian Fiction

Original title – Il Disprezzo

Translator – Angus Davidson

Source – Personal copy

I haven’t read Moravia in years in fact when I thought about it how long ago it was it must have been twenty five years ago and as I have a lot of his books on my shelves when this showed up as a possible title for the 1954 club it seemed time to read him I had planned an unsuccessful Italian reading month and planned to read him years ago but that failed so I grasp this chance to read the best known post war writer from Italy , well his best works all came after the war.He was the master of examine the relationship behind those middle class doors getting to the heart of what makes relationships and men and women beat. He won most of the major prize in Italian fiction. He also was married to the great Italian writer Elsa Morante he also had a relationship with Dacia Marani so he was at the `Heart of the Italian literary scene. A lot of his books were also made into films this was as well By the Great Jean Luc Goddard I haven’t seen the film I watch the trailer and hope to catch it at some point as I like Goddard work.

At the time when I first met Battista, I found myself in an extremely situation, and I did not know how to escape from it. My difficulty consisted in my having that time acquired the lease of a flat, although I had not the money to complete my payment for it and did not know how I should get the money. We had lived Emila and I, during our first two years, in a large furnished roomie a lodging house. Any other woman woman but Emil would perhaps not have put up with this provisional arrangements, but, in the case of Emil, I think that, by accepting it, she gave me the greatest proof of love that a devoted wife can give a husband. Emilia was, indeed what is called a born housewife.

The two need money hence he takes the screenwriting job

The book is about a couple Riccardo Molten he is one of these young writer that thinks he is the next best thing but he has end up as a screenwriter on a film that is an adaptation of the Odyssey and he is married to the Beautiful Emil but she is maybe what would now be called a wag as she tries to escape her past or as he calls it her ancestral situation. So she likes the best things in life and this is how  Ricardo end up with the scriptwriting gig, to keep her with a made and with her sports car. The story follows the making of the film which he is doing for a producer called Battista whom early on spends time alone with his wife after they go in her car and he is left to follow and gets held up. Then on another occasion Emil sees Ricardo kiss his secretary. This sets up the story as it is one of mistrust as we see a marriage fall apart as one man seems to set it on a course to split.s this Happens Riccardo sees parallels in his life and the film Odyssey he is making.He is a sensitive soul that is baked in the sun as the film is made and things start to get worse as The director ask for to much in the film they are making.

As Came into y own street, I was again seized with perplexity; Emila was certainly not at home, and I , in that new flat which now seemed to me not so much strange as actively hostile should feel more lost and miserable than I should in a public place. For a moment I was almost tempted to turn back to go and spend that hour and a half in a cafe. Then with a sudden providential reawakening of memory, I recalled that I had promised Battista, the previous day, Tobbe at home at that time, so that he could telephone me and arrange an appointment. This would be an important appointment, because Battista was to speak to me at last about the new script, and to make concrete proposals and introduce me to the director

Later on he is less sure of Emila where is she.

The novel came about partly as his own marriage was in trouble. The Main thing I felt as I read the book was that old say as you sow, so shall you reap this is a classic case of the problems being in the n=mind of the main characters and getting blown out of proportions. along side so clever framing devices like the film , the subject matter of the film.I used the term baked in the sun as this is how the book felt it is a pressure cooker of a marriage ready to explode if there isn’t a gentle release.Another interesting choice for the 1954 club. it is well plotted with the four main character the husband and wIfe the film producer and as I haven’t mentioned the director Rheingold a man that makes unrealistic expectations on Riccardo around the film m and how it is to be made. This is a dissection  of a marriage it is pulled apart with a cold eye and you can see a man writing about his own as he writes around this fictional couple. Moravia portrays what it is like to be in the middle of this all as not is happening. Have you read anything by Alberto Moravia ?

Winston’s score -+B An insight into a marriage falling apart based on the writers own marriage failing.