La Vita Intima - Niccolò Ammaniti

Ammaniti wrote some good books. A couple of them might even be among the best ones out of the contemporary Italian canon, but this isn't one of them. 

Much of the book is a light and stress-free read that doesn't trouble (but also doesn't give much to think about to) the reader. The end leaps past the banal and edges dangerously close to the brutally uninspired. 

Maria Cristina, the book's main character, is essentially presented as an empty vessel, and over the course of the novel she doesn't really develop as much as the author would perhaps like us to believe. It might be that this is a man writing about what is essentially the archetype of a desperate housewife of the Italian ruling class. Or it might just be that the character is inherently dull and the book is full of trivialities (something that Ammaniti in most of his other books appears to avoid).