The Fifth Child – Doris Lessing

Not the book that most would pick as their first Doris Lessing read, but my wife found a surplus copy of The Fifth Child selling for 30p at the Barbican library and – understandably – just had to buy it. So one afternoon I read this novel, expecting it to be soft and romantic before grabbing it from the bookshelf, then actually reading the comments on the back-cover and realizing that it would have been darker than I had expected, and ending up being completely weirded out by it within a couple of hours.

The novel is about our identity (identities?), I suppose, about our darkest aspects and about our animalistic instincts, or, even more generally, about human nature (and also what constitutes a human, I guess). Yet, read as one half of a young married couple, to me it was more about the instability of even the most perfect love and family, about the affection and protective instincts a mother feels towards her children no matter what, and about the destructive power of every one of us.

Probably the novel had an even bigger impact on me because I read it shortly after watching We Need to Talk About Kevin. It’s a book that I’m really glad I’ve read, but maybe not one I would really recommend.

White Noise – Don DeLillo

As many have probably guessed by now, my favourite literary theme in my late teens and early 20s was anti-Fascism, that on my late 20s (probably owing to a process of – relative – de-politicization) has been American suburban life, and White Noise might be the greatest book on the topic that I’ve read so far.

I don’t know why, but reading about the miseries of the American middle-class somehow makes me happy (hysterically happy at times – maybe it’s some kind of disorder...). In addition to that, Jack, the main character, is a fairly successful historian lacking the most basic skill needed in his trade: he can’t speak the language of the country his research is focused upon (I picked my Ph.D. topic also because it was the one time in my life in an English-speaking country in which I could have used my language skills, and I found Jack’s issue absolutely hilarious).

White Noise is just an excellent work from start to finish, constantly exploring new issues with a clinic and cynical eye: first we have a clear picture of the daily lives of the characters and their idiosyncrasies, then we move on to a wonderful discussion on life and its instability (turns out we all have to die, whether we have been exposed to an “airborne toxic event” or not – something really rather banal but that is expressed so wonderfully in the novel) to finish with great pages on our steadfast faith in medications of all kinds and the actual value of revenge. Just priceless.

On the Road – Jack Kerouack

"Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there."
"Where we going, man?"
"I don't know but we gotta go."

I had this quote written on a post-it note and placed on my wardrobe in Italy ever since I was a teenager. It took me a dozen years, and countless hopeless tries that usually stopped at around page 14, before I was actually able (mature?) to read the book.

Much to my surprise, by the time I was 27 I was actually able to read On the Road and, even more surprisingly, I didn’t find it dated at all. The story is made even more interesting by the fact that so many of its characters are actually disguised real-life artists (including Burroughs – and the fact that I really didn’t like Naked Lunch doesn’t mean I didn’t find his life fascinating).

Some of Sal’s trips are more exciting than others, but I had the feeling that, ever since crossing into Mexico for the first time in the fourth part, the quality of the books rises to new heights. And the final scene is a coming-of-age and end-of-an-era realization of epic proportions.

A Cidadela Inventada – Pihba Cavalcanti

And for my 150^th post, a book by, erm, my father in law (and with this second one, I promise, I am done with books by family, friends, etc.). Jokes aside, a couple of years ago every bookstore in Brazil had a few copies of the novel, so it actually deserves to be here in its own right.

The book is a clear declaration of love from its author to his city (Recife, in Pernambuco – Brazil) and the amount of research that has gone into its more historic pages is really impressive. All the characters are funny, if a bit goofy, and the reader is naturally drawn to them.

As I predicted, I enjoyed the sections of the novel that deal with the development of the city during the Dutch period much more than the dream-like science-fiction (it’s not a coincidence that one of the author’s favourite books is Calvino’s Cosmicomiche). Also, I read the book in Portuguese, a language I can read only reasonably well and can’t speak at all, so a number of the subtleties of the novel probably escaped me (that said, I discovered some amusing assonances between Portuguese and the Piedmontese dialect – something that I found utterly random...).