Caos Calmo – Sandro Veronesi

I found a hardback edition of this Italian best-seller in the foreign-language section of Waterstones for 1£ - a few more finds like these and my National Book Tokens will last me a lifetime...

This novel is beautifully banal. Obviously everyone has a different way of dealing with the death of a lover. Obviously children are extremely resourceful. Obviously all families, even the ones that look picture-perfect from the outside, are messed up in one way or another (well, except for mine!). Obviously corporate greed is evil. Obviously people have their secrets.

And yet, for all its banality (and the dullness of many of its cultural reference-points), this book is extremely well-written and remarkably enjoyable.

That said, I would have preferred if the main character hadn’t started thinking that his dead lover was sending him post-mortem messages through Thom Yorke’s voice...