Le Perfezioni - Vincenzo Latronico

 

This was one of my frequent attempts to engage with Italian literature by going through the shortlists of the country's biggest literary prizes. 

As usual, I despair for the present and future of (just?) Italian literature. I can  picture authors stopping to re-read a sentence and spending 10 self-congratulatory minutes to remind themselves of how wonderful their prose is, and how imaginative their plot twists are, when in reality they are "meh" at the very, very best. 

But this is a book that I absolutely loved to detest. The main characters are obnoxious, the kind of Italians abroad that I hate with passion, those who leave the country but can't think of learning a new language besides basic rudiments, who are completely unable to break the umbilical chord that links them to the motherland, who anyway will always be able to count upon family wealth as and when needed and who only really have meaningful interactions - no matter where they are - with people born within 500 km of their native village. 

If Latronico's book is an ironic critique of this kind of people, I might read something else by him, but I actually doubt he had any intention of criticizing his characters or their way to see the world.