La Ricreazione E' Finita - Dario Ferrari

I got this book thinking it'd be a (reasonably) pleasant light read that would leave no lasting memory. Said assumption was motivated by the synopsis on the novel's jacket presenting the main character as a symbol of the generation of the pseudo-promising pseudo-young pseudo-intellectuals that fill the Italian universities on precarious contracts. So something that was bound to resonate with me, but also something that I've heard so much about that was quite unlikely to find this book particularly interesting and novel. 

Clearly, I was in for a big surprise. The sections on the beginning of the protagonist's doctorate are pleasant and fresh (and his web of relationships made me think of Eshkol Nevo's World Cup Wishes), but the detailed story of the fictional writer/terrorist that he ends up researching is something that absolutely steals the scene. 

Sure, I could have done without some things (I would have loved for the main character to also interact with some non-Italians in Paris - man, do my people ever leave their country, even when they cross its borders?!? - and his infatuation for the pretty younger girl in the second half of the book leaves a lot to be desired), but the final pages, with a twist that I definitely did not see coming, make up for any  minor shortcoming. 

The World According to Garp - John Irving

 

What a book! 

The World According to Garp is a beautifully written (and at times laugh out loud funny) book about, well, the world: sex (consensual and not) and sexuality are the obvious themes, but in the epic family history there is so much space for love (often misplaced, misunderstood and misguided, but still love) and loss (the chapter after the car accident, where at the end the readers realize that their attention was fully devoted to the survivors without feeling the absence of one voice, contains some of the most hauntingly dramatic passages I've ever read). 

Despite the fact that my main literary advisor - yes, my mum... - told me to read pretty much every John Irving book straight away, I'll try to pace myself with him in the upcoming months as I don't want to overdo it and forget how much I loved this novel. 

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

I have read quite a bit of Toni Morrison recently and, as often happens when I read multiple books by one author over a short period of time, the returns were diminishing. 

The Bluest Eye probably ended up being my least favourite Toni Morrison novel, which is a shame as so many of the themes it covers are - quite clearly - absolutely topical. Yet, the fact that at no point in this book there is a glimmer of hope, and also the fact that the instances of (small amounts of) happiness - which I think are quite common in childhood, regardless of the level of deprivation - are few and far between made the reading hard for me. Add to that the fact that, because of the way in which the novel is framed, the reader ultimately knows what to expect from the very beginning, and you ultimately have a rather unsatisfying book, at least from my own point of view. 

The narrating voice(s) are interesting and - at times at least - self-critical to a degree, which ultimately made me feel rather bad as a human being (not a good thing per se, but actually quite good in the grand scheme of things, obviously...). 

Red Sorghum - Mo Yan

 

I had meant to read this book since discovering years ago a beautiful collection of short stories by Mo Yan. 

Red Sorghum ended up being very much in line with what I expected. My mother said she found it a Chinese version of Doctor Zhivago, but in all honesty I enjoyed this a fair deal more than Pasternak's book. 

A number of things were obviously "lost in translation" for me: the heroic tone of many tales, the frequent repetition of words, idioms and plot twists, and also the characters' sentimental dynamics. Yet, it brought to life a period of Chinese history that I had read about at length from a historical point of view in a way that I had not experienced before, and that to me is rather commendable. 

The Heart Goes Last - Margaret Atwood

I guess when you publish with the speed of Margaret Atwood (though I wonder how much of that speed is cause by publishers' pressure to get as much out of her as possible while she's still alive!) every now and again you hit a small bump in the road. 

This is obviously not a bad book. I don't think Margaret Atwood would be capable of writing a bad book (famous last words?!?), but this is really just alright. For all the death and violence around, it's not enough to make the reader terrified of what kind of future awaits us. And the attempts at humour are simply not funny enough. 

The pretty sappy final couple of chapters are also something I could have done without. The "no harm done + happily ever after with a hint of faint surprise" really left me unconvinced. 

A Long Petal of the Sea - Isabel Allende

 

Granted, I only read this book because of the dearth of other available titles from Southwark's ebook library at the time, but damn this was bad...

Pretty much every book I've ever read by Allende brings in her uncle Salvador, which I actually find quite frustrating after a while. One thing is to do it in an autobiographical tale like Paula, but doing it here feels just like a cheap trick to get people to say "oh, yes, I know that guy" (a feeling that then most people vaguely familiar with 1973 Chile will experience again at the multiple mentions of Neruda and Victor Jara). 

Mini-rant aside, for me this book read just like a melodrama aimed at a 19th century audience - everything was theatrical and pseudo-poetic. Of all the things that this novel attempts to cover, the only passages that I found (vaguely) interesting were the ones covering the escape from Barcelona at the end of the Spanish Civil War. On the plus side, at least it was a quick read...