Patria - Fernando Aramburu

In my desperate search for something to read over the last couple of months, I decided to read this widely acclaimed novel. Winner of all sorts of awards and, for me, very much in the mould of A Little Life - something so bad that it made me question the sanity of thousands of supposed intellectuals around the world. 

While I do understand that ETA caused a lot of problems to people in the Basque countries and all over Spain, the vision of the book feels excessively Manichean. Miren feels little more than a caricature from a 1950s B-movie. And while on critic wrote that this is War and Peace for our times, I think it's more like a very low calibre feuilleton (then again, I have never actually read War and Peace!). 

I unfortunately read this in translation, and the translator did a monumentally pathetic job: some  Spanish expression were translated literally, others more freely, the verbal tenses (already confusing in the original, I've been informed) were all over the place, and the whole prose was so incredibly stilted. 

The Door - Magda Szabó

 

I was really grasping at straws as most of my e-libraries didn't seem to have anything particularly appealing on offer. Then my daughter's Hungarian BFF came over for a playdate and that made me realize that, other than The Paul Street Boys, I had never never a single Hungarian book, so I chanced upon this novel. 

The start was a bit of a slog, with the focus on female companionship and bickering not being something I found engaging, but then I got into the novel ("getting into a novel" - what an awful turn of phrase...) and I was left in awe of what I think can be considered a small masterpiece. 

Szabó's book is one of small secrets that are justifiably oh-so-important to her characters. It is one of love between people who at first glance have very little in common. And crucially is one in which the reader (or at least, that was the case for me) finds him/herself justifying most of the narrator's decisions and actions, while eventually accepting also Emerenc's viewpoint and, at the end of the day, wishing s/he was more like the cantankerous cleaning lady who appears to singlehandedly hold a small community together. 

Mon Assassin - Daniel Pennac

 

The book that I didn't know I needed. Seriously. The last novel by Pennac had left me so unmoved and disappointed, but this short book (not quite a novella, not fully an autobiography) brought me peace and closure. 

It is extremely tactful, and I ultimately see it as an attempt by Pennac to exorcise some of his demons, talk about loss, give his real-life friends and unorthodox family members their chance to take centre stage, and in general come to terms with the end of his career and, in the not so distant future, eventually the end of his own life. 

Unfortunately, I'm rather certain that in a couple of years he'll be persuaded to write something else, or someone will unearth an early draft of an unfinished novel and decide to publish it, or something equally unappealing. And sadly Pennac will have his own Baugmartner or, possibly worse, Silverview or,  possibly worse, Go Set a Watchman. 

Look at Me - Jennifer Egan

 

After liking-without-loving A Visit from the Goon Squad I decided to read another Egan novel as I had just read a couple of books by Rachel Kushner and felt that I might as well read something more by the another widely acclaimed American female author. 

And this one absolutely blew me away. It had all the markers of a "great American novel" for me. Part suburbia, part big city. A healthy dose of criticism of systemic flaws. A main characters who is complex, multifaceted and, ultimately, oddly relatable. 

Yet, the novel's greatest accomplishment is probably its being ahead of the times, with a character in Z who just about predates the drama of 9/11 and whose life shares so many similarities with what we know of those of many other terrorists who have emerged ever since. 

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. 

Due - Enrico Brizzi

 

It must be hard to have written one hugely successful book, and follow it up with a list of very uninspiring novels, and Brizzi was just trying to milk (again) the one thing that gave him fame. 

I was expecting/hoping this book would be a sequel covering Aidi and Alex's lives 30 years after their high-school years - that kind of nostalgic operation (kind of like in Trainspotting 2) I could have got behind. 

Instead, this is an immediate sequel of Jack Frusciante E' Uscito dal Gruppo and it just doesn't work for me - Aidi is boring, on a high-school exchange that I look down upon because I am a snob, in a place that I find uninspiring, and the charm of interrail travelling and backpacking like Alex has long lost its appeal for me. 

Still, I'm reasonably happy to have read this because, while this is not a good book by any measure, I liked the original one enough to bring myself to care a bit about its sequel and it was obviously an easy way to pass a day or two during the Christmas holiday. Still, Enrico Brizzi, please, move on...

Resto Qui - Marco Balzano

 

For me, this book was too ambitious. It had plenty of poignant ideas and events to cover: the rise of Fascism and its impact in a German-speaking part of Italy, a pleasant enough love story between people with different approaches to life and levels of education, the decision to submerge a village before WWII to make room for a damn, a hydroelectric power plant, and an artificial lake, and the final completion of the project well after the end of the war and the collapse of the regime. 

Yet, by trying to do all of it in a short novel, the author doesn't really do justice to any of those things: the condemnation of Fascism and its linguistic policies feels little more than a mild tirade, I didn't really care about the individual characters, and I was quite willing to chalk the creation of the artificial lake to "ah, that's progress, it had to happen"...

The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner

The Mars Room is still my favourite Kushner novel to date. I possibly had too high expectations of The Flamethrowers, and while I found it a really enjoyable novel, I didn't quite think it was one of the best of the 21st century, failing short of being either a "great American novel" or a "great transnational novel". 

The parts that I found most exciting were without a doubt the American ones - in particular the ones set in Utah, between the mentions of Spiral Jetty, the discussions of the main character's artistic and photographic aspirations, and her motorcycle rides (whose epic nature reminded me of Peter Carey's A Long Way from Home). 

The Italian section, on the other hand, left me quite dissatisfied, between an overview of the situation that feels superficial, a family dynamic that I found fairly uninteresting, and the decision to cross the border into France in the one place that all readers must know (Mount Blanc - I was unimpressed). While some reviewers argue that Kushner wrote a great novel about Italian terrorism in the 1970s, I think this pales in comparison to, say, Dario Ferrari's La Ricreazione E' Finita. 

Io Khaled Vendo Uomini e Sono Innocente

 

Even months after having read this, I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. 

On the one hand, it's obviously important to talk about the people behind the trafficking of migrants across the Mediterranean, and show their place in "the system". 

On the other hand, at times this book made me feel as if the author was herself exploiting the suffering of migrants in her book (and surprisingly, the most gruelling scenes left me relatively unmoved - perhaps because we are all getting tragically used and routinely exposed to them?) while being a bit too supportive of the narrator's own attempts to deny his own agency and importance within the people smuggling network. 

Divorare il Cielo - Paolo Giordano

 

I got this book as I had (surprisingly) loved Tasmania last year and, after all, Paolo Giordano had written one of the biggest Italian editorial successes of the 21st century. 

Instead, with Divorare il Cielo we have a very early, but very serious, contender for "worst book I've read in 2025". 

The plot is poor and jumps the shark about 25 times. The characters are either unbearable, unbelievable, or underdeveloped (in particular every woman other than the narrator), but preferably all three. Somehow, the book also made me sincerely uninterested in Apulia, which is now widely considered one of the coolest regions of Italy. 

It really felt like Giordano was trying to present himself as the Italian Franzen here, but fell way short in all things that make Franzen great, and just went way more wrong in all the things that at times make me question Franzen's actual greatness...

Telex from Cuba - Rachel Kushner

 

Having discovered that Rachel Kushner's Italian translator is a lady I met, I decided to read another one of her books (and didn't have too many reservations about reading it in translation). 

While I greatly enjoyed the writing, I felt that the book spent too much time setting the scene and providing historical background - probably because I'm reasonably familiar with the history of the Cuban revolution, partly because I teach about it, partly because I have watched The Godfather Part 2...

Still, once the plot "gets to the point" the book shares a number of similarities with many of my beloved suburban middle-class American novels, and that's a huge selling point. Also, it ultimately does a really good job of explaining how monoculture in general (and United Fruit in particular) messed up a country and its people. 

Donne di Tipo 1 - Roberta Casasole

 

Picked this book because of its cover. A staunch feminist colleague of mine (who has taught me a couple of valuable lessons) uses a picture by the same artist as her avatar, so I just assumed this book would have been at least insightful. 

Instead, this was without a doubt the worst book I've read this year. 

Obviously, you don't need to like a book's main character in order to like the book, but you have to find him/her at the very least remotely interesting. Instead, the book's protagonist is a selfish entitled brat with misguided ideas about her academic value. Still, I can find a way to live with that.  

What I can't live with is the constant feeling that the author finds her creation (and herself, by default?) hilarious. It's just irritating. 

Also: what kind of supposed feminist spends her time talking about how hot someone is?!?

Tutta la Vita che Resta - Roberta Recchia

 

One of the Italian books that I just have to read every now and again. Melodramatic to the ninth degree - with somehow managed crisis after somehow managed crisis and the very occasional brief interlude of something resembling calm. 

Yet, this is not the utterly unbearable A Little Life. I actually got to feel something for the characters, and in all this drama I didn't think that the author was simply riding on the readers' emotions (and their manipulation), but was actually telling a genuinely compelling story and touching on a variety of themes with skills. 

Obviously, a number of plot twists were rather predictable - ranging from the family eventually finding a way to patch things up, to the solution of the initial crime, to the disappearance of central yet ultimately expendable characters. Still, this remain a book that I enjoyed way more than what I had expected.  

Lucy by the Sea - Elizabeth Strout

 

I feel like I have written this before, but while I very much love the writing of Elizabeth Strout and the atmosphere that she is able to create with her books, all of them - perhaps with the exception of the ones about Olive Kitteridge - blur into one. Lucy by the Sea was a clear demonstration of that, as I remembered having read My Name Is Lucy Barton, but in spite of its title I couldn't for the life of me recall who Lucy Barton actually was...

I have yet to find a book whose handling of the recent pandemic I find compelling, perhaps because it's something that we have all lived through. On the plus side, at least this book was a clear upgrade compared to the rather miserable Day by Michael Cunningham. 

What I did like about this book, though, was the narrative arch of William (Lucy's husband). I must confess I was rather ticked off by the brave "knight in shining armour" (who at the same time has the foresight of "the stoic man of science"), but in the last few chapters it was really interesting to see his own daughters discuss with Lucy the probable selfish reasons behind some of his actions, and Lucy recognizing them - perhaps having known that was the case all along, and reclaiming her own agency.  

The New Life - Tom Crewe

 

A novel I literally just stumbled upon by coincidence, as I was looking for something at least somewhat inspiring in the catalogue of my Italian e-library (and yes, I did read this in translation - shame on me, the things I do for convenience...). What attracted me of this book was its title, its cover (yes, I do judge books by their cover!) and the fact that the author and I came very close to studying together. 

It took me two weeks to read this book, but really only because life got in the way in a pretty major way and we moved to a new house (a whole 200 mt down the road, but the move felt transatlantic). 

I appreciated this book for a variety of reasons. Its didactic nature when tackling the theme - and the acts - of homosexuality (in a way that wasn't too dissimilar from some of the works of David Leavitt), its ability to re-visit, re-shape and re-create history (and here the most immediate comparison for me would be Pat Barker, most likely because I've just finished reading her), and the degree of honesty with which it discusses the double-standards that queer men and women had to deal with in the late 19th century, much like in the early 21st. 

That said, in a way that is typical of many first novels, I also felt that the author didn't quite know how to wrap up his book, and the last couple of chapters feel abruptly squeezed in at the very least.