Wednesday, 3 August 2016

Uno, Nessuno e Centomila – Luigi Pirandello

How dreadfully boring! Seriously, I understand this book is meant to be one of the greatest Italian 20th century novels, but can we all just agree that it’s a 150-page yawn in the 21st century?

So, Vitangelo Moscarda (even his name is dreadful) is a loan shark and is having second thoughts about his life and his identity. So what? 90 years after the book’s publication all its brilliant points are just so utterly trite. I got really happy when towards the end he got mortally wounded – knowing that there were still a few pages to go I was hoping that the first-person narrator would then start telling some bizarre after-life tale that could add a bit of flair to this novel. Sadly, Pirandello just seemed to use the term “mortally wounded” rather inappropriately, as Vitangelo survives…


Or maybe I’m just being harsh because Pirandello was fundamentally a Fascist?!?

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