Oh, how I miss the days when colleagues would give me their
old unwanted books! This was the last gift from the man who introduced me to
Peter Carey and Viet Thanh Nguyen (although also the one who gave me the
awfulness that was Kundera’s Immortality and
the uselessness that was Tove Jansson’s Winter
Book).
The Lost Sailors starts
slow and stereotypical in its depiction of manly men and their everyday
struggles – these stories don’t excite me particularly, as I don’t feel the
need to read about epic displays of masculinity and courage in late 20th
century novels.
But then, quite literally, the music changes (and for me it
was in no small part due to the multiple references to Gianmaria Testa, the
former station manager in a place near my hometown and a wonderful singer) and
the story shifts its focus to love and crime – which are slightly more
interesting than manliness, but not excessively original – and most of all to a
not-so veiled critique of the way in which seamen are forgotten by the rest of the
world. And that’s the reason why in the end I quite liked this book. That, and
the fact that, for obvious reasons, it kept on reminding me of The Count of Monte Cristo.
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