Dentro il Palazzo - Carlo Cottarelli

My parents went to a book presentation by Cottarelli and enjoyed it so much that they managed to come out of it with five copies of this book. Partly they liked him because he's an engaging speaker, partly because they share enough of his political positions, partly because my mom had a bit of a crush on him, but mostly because he studied at LSE, which in my family's highly informal global university rankings sits at the very top (now, try to guess where their only child works?!?). 

As far as non-fiction books go, this is one of the best I've read. It's very well-written, and I got plenty of ideas and a lot of clarifications about the intricacies of the Italian political system. Like at the end of a good essay, the first part of the book (dealing with the Italian parliamentary system, while the second part deals with the period that saw Cottarelli appear as a viable candidate for Prime Minister) concludes with a series of recommendations that the author makes to improve Italian politics. 

Yet, I can't help but feel that this book ultimately doesn't fulfil its ambition to revitalize the interest of the population in the Italian political system. Its ideal audience is ultimately people like me and my parents, people willing to actually concentrate to understand some of the (relatively) intricate points that Cottarelli makes, and who are (reasonably) dissatisfied with the system but still acknowledge its usefulness. Those who are opposed to the status quo, or too disengaged, would most likely see in this book a clear demonstration of the fact that there are too many things that are inherently wrong, and we should just burn the house (or the Italian parliament) down. 

Prophet Song - Paul Lynch

Every now and again I have to read a dystopian novel. And every now and again I have to be reminded that I don't really love them. Unless they are The Road. 

Prophet Song is undeniably good, but the fact that the dynamics of the frictions between the two warring factions are never discussed (the novel begins as the situation is already beginning to spiral out of control, with almost no explanations) made it quite hard for me to "buy into" the book. 

That said, I really was impressed by how the author makes the reader realize that so many of the main characters' decisions are, ultimately, wrong, yet dramatically understandable and justifiable. 

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

 

What a book!

And to think that I picked it up almost by chance, because I loved its title and the cover picture. Just like with James Baldwin (the world's most banal comparison, sorry!) I was astonished by how current it felt despite its year of publication. 

The exoticization of black people by many well-intentioned whites who then get scared (or sceptical, or bored) is something that I see - and am most likely guilty of - on a daily basis, as is the slipping through the cracks of formal education of countless black students. And let's not get started on the hopelessness of certain excessively cerebral approaches to politics of some people whose problem is not so much their privilege (though that's an undeniable fact), but rather their complete isolation and inability to imagine a world in which their idea(l)s are not the most important thing for everyone. 

The Twenty-Seventh City - Jonathan Franzen

 

I read this book because, well, it's Franzen and I've read every other Franzen novel (I believe - I know I could check on Wikipedia, but I can't be bothered at the moment). 

Despite the low expectations, I enjoyed this book "enough". That said, I was a bit at odds with the scheming police officer's background. Indian people have got a little less than zero visibility in North-American literature as as I know, and in here Jammu essentially comes across as the Palpatine of St Louis. On the other hand, Franzen does look at one individual and the influence she has on "her people" (both in terms of those around her in general, and the Indian community in the city) and does not seem to make (too many) harsh generalizations. 

The book packs in a lot. As is the case at times with Franzen, it probably packs in too much. And by the time the final pages come, the novel and its author definitely jump the shark. 

Red Pill - Hari Kunzru

 

For once, I actually picked up a hard copy book from the Southwark Library (mostly out of surprise for seeing a couple of Kunzru titles in a library that is otherwise not crazily well-stocked, and that's obviously an understatement). 

Unfortunately this was my least-favourite Hari Kunzru novel. The dystopian present setting plus mental breakdown reminded me a bit too much of a relatively disappointing Paul Auster novel. 

I also thought that the autobiographical writing was one of the great problems with wanna-be writers, but ultimately there are too many aspects of Red Pill that appear too reflective of Kunrzu's life. I just hope for his own sake he's a bit happier than this literary alter-ego of his. 

A Long Petal of the Sea - Isabel Allende

 

Granted, I only read this book because of the dearth of other available titles from Southwark's ebook library at the time, but damn this was bad...

Pretty much every book I've ever read by Allende brings in her uncle Salvador, which I actually find quite frustrating after a while. One thing is to do it in an autobiographical tale like Paula, but doing it here feels just like a cheap trick to get people to say "oh, yes, I know that guy" (a feeling that then most people vaguely familiar with 1973 Chile will experience again at the multiple mentions of Neruda and Victor Jara). 

Mini-rant aside, for me this book read just like a melodrama aimed at a 19th century audience - everything was theatrical and pseudo-poetic. Of all the things that this novel attempts to cover, the only passages that I found (vaguely) interesting were the ones covering the escape from Barcelona at the end of the Spanish Civil War. On the plus side, at least it was a quick read...

La Vita Intima - Niccolò Ammaniti

Ammaniti wrote some good books. A couple of them might even be among the best ones out of the contemporary Italian canon, but this isn't one of them. 

Much of the book is a light and stress-free read that doesn't trouble (but also doesn't give much to think about to) the reader. The end leaps past the banal and edges dangerously close to the brutally uninspired. 

Maria Cristina, the book's main character, is essentially presented as an empty vessel, and over the course of the novel she doesn't really develop as much as the author would perhaps like us to believe. It might be that this is a man writing about what is essentially the archetype of a desperate housewife of the Italian ruling class. Or it might just be that the character is inherently dull and the book is full of trivialities (something that Ammaniti in most of his other books appears to avoid). 

 

Lessons - Ian McEwan

 

Now here's an author (like Ali Smith) who seems more unable than me to let Brexit go, and this is saying a lot. 

And here's an author (like Ali Smith) who probably tries to pack too much in too few pages. The story of Roland and Miss Cornell, for me, would have been enough. The persistence of his memory of her throughout his life, and her unexpected brief return, would have made this a great novel. 

Turning the book into a brief history of Britain from WWII to today as seen through the eyes of one person, on the other hand, was stretching it a bit. Even when I find myself agreeing with most of McEwan's points about British politics and society, I don't really see the need to read about them. They are not surprising, they are not particularly engaging. Not for me at the very least. 

A shorter novel on the frenzy, trauma, and confusion caused (?) by Miss Cornell would have ranked among McEwan's finest. Instead, I consider this a great "intro to the current British divisions" for my mum, along the lines of some of Ali Smith's recent books and Jonathan Coe's Middle England. With the added bonus of having large passages set in Suffolk (where we were coincidentally holidaying as I was reading the book) and mentioning Mick Jagger's stint as an LSE student. 

The Cockroach - Ian McEwan

  

McEwan has it in for Brexit even more than I do by the looks of it. He might not be originally "from the continent", but he does appear to be perplexed and saddened by his country's botched seppuku attempt. And to think that it was written in 2019, which now to me looks like a wonderfully heady period of friendship and stability. 

This is a light read if there ever was one. It's even funny - at times - when it's not trying too hard. I agree with the bottom line (Brexit is nuts, and why would anyone want it), but for a therapeutic laugh I'd always pick a column by Marina Hyde on top of a novella.

Così Giocano le Bestie Giovani - Davide Longo

A book that I read while on holiday in Italy, and something that I used to break up the never-ending task of reading Paul Auster's "4321" - something that hopefully will end at some point this weekend.

As I said in my last post, Longo's prose remains unparalleled in contemporary Italian literature, and this dark detective story is extremely captivating. There are a couple of characters I could have lived without (the counsellor/psychiatrist/psychologist, and, erm, the dog), but other than that it remained a very enjoyable read.

Enjoyable because it's again about Turin, because it's about Italy's dark recent past, and because it made me love the character of Corso Bramard, something that his previous book hadn't managed to do.

Middle England - Jonathan Coe

A rare Jonathan Coe book that I didn't enjoy, and yet one that I think serves an educational purpose (at least for non-British writers).

The characters that I loved so much in The Rotters' Club, and that I still enjoyed in The Closed Circle are back for a third time and, at this point, it's just a bit much: with age they've lost a lot of their charm and too many of them have turned into allegoric representations of the sections of society they belong to.

While some of the new characters that are introduced are interesting enough, most of them are rather one-dimensional. The themes discussed are so widely covered in the media these days, and in rather similar ways, that they don't really add anything new. And the ending of the book is not one of the typical chaotic and rocambolesque ones that Coe usually goes for, but rather a flat one that reminds the reader of a cheap romance.

Yet, for someone who doesn't live in the UK and knows little about the current political landscape, this book can be a really good introduction to Brexit and the awfulness of the current political discourse in Britain.

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum - Heinrich Böll

I thought Group Portrait with Lady was too long and lost its magic in the final 50 pages. I now think that The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is too short and never gets to have much magic in the first place.

As usual, this is a novel about ordinary German people in turbulent times, but either because of its shortness or because of the historical period (though, being Italian, I would have expected to find its take on German political terrorism in the 1970s more interesting), I found this book, for want of a better term, a bit "hmpf"...

And I am now leaving this post much like the book itself - short and a bit pointless

An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo, don’t let me down (you have found her, now go and get her)! Seriously, I picked this book from the Blackheath book sale because it was meant to be one of his best novels, and I was really quite disappointed.

While it is interesting reading about an artist who was “on the wrong side” during WWII and his justification for his actions, I find the prose and its tones to be, quite frankly, way too bland and pastel-like. On top of that, I’ve always found artists who don’t engage in politics because they are preoccupied with the “floating world” (or at least they are telling themselves that) to be the antinomy of a true artist.

Maybe, had I not had high expectations from this book, I would have enjoyed it more – but I hold Ishiguro to a (much) higher standard than this…

The House of Spirits – Isabel Allende

Am I being overly harsh or is this book simply not of the same standard as Paula? The answer is that maybe I’ve just completely outgrown magical realism (which is sad, because back in the day I had loved A Hundred Years of Solitude so very much).

I honestly think that, had it not been for Clara’s extra sensory abilities, I would have enjoyed the novel a lot more. And I would have probably also liked it better if the characters weren’t ultimately representations of various social and political groups (and periods) in Chilean history (the roman à clef as a genre often gets a bit on my nerves). And the fact that Allende also openly declares that Blanca never married Pedro Tercero because she didn’t love him enough just stings – the guy deserved better.

But then again, most of this probably applies only to 85% of the book, because from the moment Alba gets arrested the novel gains massively in literary, political and moral weight (although it’s really too bad that Allende picked the allegoric name of Alba/Dawn for the character that is meant to symbolize hope for the future – think outside the box!)

Una Vita Violenta – Pier Paolo Pasolini

My parents each had a copy of this book when they moved in together back in the 1980s and, thirty years later, realized they had no need for two copies in the same house so gave one of them to me (that said, they’re not even sure whether they read the novel or not!)

I did love Ragazzi di Vita, but I found Una Vita Violenta (which in many ways follows in its footsteps) to be of a whole other calibre. Whereas one grows to like the Riccetto in the former a bit less as the book goes on and he settles within “the system”, I actually fell in love with Tommaso more and more with each page (after feeling the intense desire to strangle him during his football match with kids half his size at the beginning of the book, I just felt the need to protect him from the evils of the world).

Sure, his political path is a bit too allegoric for me, but by the end of the book my nerves were completely shattered. I was glad he did not drown in the flood that hit his old neighbourhood, but the end is really no less devastating (and yet, it is the only way the book could/should have ended in order to be one of the great works of the Italian literature of the last century). 

The Closed Circle – Jonathan Coe

And for once a book that my aunt gave me in 2001 and that it took me 15 years to read.

And for once a book by Jonathan Coe that I liked, but not so much.

Probably the events described by Coe were just too recent to be observed with his normally hilarious humour, but I found The Closed Circle to be a bit too sad and bleak. Also, too much of the action takes place in London (it’s just more interesting when Coe talks about the Midlands). And lastly, even though the book has a number of Coe’s customarily dramatic plot-twists, these are just a bid bland (if not stale) if compared to the ones of The Rotters’ Club and What a Carve Up!

The Closed Circle is ultimately an interesting portrayal of Britain’s recent history and the problems of Blair’s (and the former director of my school’s!) Third Way, but it’s just not Coe at his best (or maybe the 70s were a lot more fun than the 90s, or maybe 18-year olds are a lot more fun than 40-year olds, or all of the above!)

The Casual Vacancy – J.K. Rowling

I’ve only read one Harry Potter. That makes me an awful human being in the eyes of many, but that also means that I’m not disappointed at the lack of magic in this book by J.K. Rowling.

The Casual Vacancy is daring but enjoyable. Its characters for one reason or another are mostly unlikable (maybe with the exception of the Walls and of Andrew?) but remain interesting. The plot is not something that leaves the reader on the edge of the seat – I mean, these are local elections after all… – but the novel is quite an acute portrayal of contemporary Britain.

So in all fairness I think J.K. Rowling should be given credit for writing this book (and for making a number of points that are surprisingly and commendably political). It was really quite good. Had it had a bit more irony or humour in it (nothing really brought a smile to my face, except maybe for old and drunken Samantha snogging teenage Andrew) perhaps it would have even been “really” good…

The Rotters’ Club – Jonathan Coe

A book that my mom tried to persuade me to read for years. All it took for me to read it was for my boss to recommend it…

There are a number of reasons why I particularly enjoyed this novel: being used to Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi, Hari Kunzru, etc. it was refreshing for once to read a (relatively) recent light-hearted and socio-political British novel that wasn’t set in London. Also, despite the fact that my political allegiances lie elsewhere (very much so), it was a welcome change to read a novel about the personal growth and the self-doubts of a little Tory (despite the fact that Ben’s lefty friend Doug is clearly my favourite character).  Lastly, a scene in the final pages is set in the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York, a place that was wonderfully quaint and still oozing – between its cracked walls and leaking pipes – of Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith when my dad took us there 20 years ago (before it got refurbished and very much revamped).

From a stylistic point of view, Coe does a great job of alternating registers and viewpoints. His little plot twists leave you disheartened (at the very end of the first part), warm inside (during a dialogue apparently with himself that Ben has mid-way through the second part), giggly (when you discover who is the actual author of some of the most hysterical letters that the editor of a school journal can ever receive), or give you hope for the future of mankind (with Ben’s decision to go home before the end of a disastrous family holiday in Wales).

It’s been a while since I’ve last expressed this trite idea – The Rotters’ Club is clearly not a masterpiece, but hell it’s a really enjoyable read…

Il Giorno della Civetta – Leonardo Sciascia

I have already talked about three books by Sciascia, but I just wanted to add a couple of words about this one. I took it with me when I moved to Canada, because in our little international high-school we were often asked to discuss what was good and bad in our countries, and I felt that Il Giorno della Civetta was a perfect picture of both.

In the novel Sciascia paints the Sicilian mafia for what it is, without romanticising it and without indirectly praising its principles (and its violence). I was also fascinated by the fact that Sciascia wrote from the viewpoint of a policeman from Northern Italy, a decision that I found extremely bold for someone as Sicilian as Sciascia. Had this book been published ten years ago, I would like to think that it would have enjoyed more success than Roberto Saviano’s Gomorra, but it probably wouldn’t have been the case.

One could easily teach Italian history through Sciascia’s books, but again that’s a risk we’re not going to run anytime soon...

The Postman – Antonio Skármeta

A novel that I bought with my dad as a Christmas gift for my mom (the only book I ever recall buying in a supermarket and not in a bookshop). I still remember my dad explaining to me that Massimo Troisi, the actor who played the titular postman in the movie taken from the novel, was a wonderful artist who died right after finishing the film.

When I read it as a teenager the book made want to get into poetry. I obviously tried with Neruda first, then followed it with the Poètes maudits, Pessoa, Lorca, Kavafis and many others, but to no avail. I was probably too shallow for poetry back then. I should try again, but I’m afraid I’m not much deeper than I was back then.

Skármeta’s novel is about Chile, about its most illustrious poet (Neruda, clearly), and about the poetry of the everyday life of the Chileans. There are plenty of novels in which important historical figures mentor some young and uneducated locals, and they often run the risk of becoming trivial. This novel avoids that. Mario, Neruda’s postman, does not evolve into a luminary of the literary world, and probably this is the reason why the novel isn’t banal, just touchingly beautiful. If at first his inability to express his feelings and the need to recur to Neruda’s poems is a bit too Cyranoesque, some of Mario’s simple thoughts are actually reflections of very serious issues, both political and literary (after all, does poetry belong to those who write it or to those who use it?).