Bliss – Peter Carey

And another book given to me by my colleague as he was moving flats (this time, however, one that I greatly enjoyed).

Bliss’s plot is hilarious (a term that I normally detest, but that I think describes the novel quite well) and its improbable twists all appear somehow believable. I just kind of wish the reader was told what happened to Lucy and her truck-driving boyfriend, but Carey’s novel remains for me a wonderfully entertaining and witty portrait of a clash between high-flying career-focused people and, erm, hippies.

And probably I also really enjoyed this because I know nothing about Australian literature (well, it depends on whether you consider Coetzee to be Australian…). 

Theatre – William Somerset Maugham

This was the first book by Somerset Maugham that I read. I’m not exactly rushing to read another one. Many would say that I should have picked one of his more seminal books, but this was the only one I had handy, and there are plenty of cases in which I loved minor novel(la)s of great writers. This just wasn’t one of those.

Having seen Eve Against Eve I think I had enough of the whims of glorious (or glorified?) actresses before even starting to read this. The book is undeniably well-written, nobody can say otherwise, and I understand why many people might find it a good read. I like theatre a fair bit, although not having been raised in Britain I’m not as crazy about it as many of the people around me are, and this is probably the reason why I ultimately saw very little point in this book.

Il Mondo Deve Sapere – Michela Murgia

Every now and again I remember that, after all, I am Italian. When that happens I try to read some literature from my country, and this is the direct result of that feeling.

Michela Murgia is now an MP, but before that she was a blogger writing very humorous entries about her life in a call centre. While undeniably amusing, I wondered why this book was one of the Italian bestsellers a few years ago. After all, at the end of the day it’s just a collection of blog entries ironically describing the sadness of the author’s life, nothing more, nothing less.

Entertaining, yes sure. But literature? Surely not. And did we need a book to tell us that, hey, life in a call centre can be crap? Probably not. And clearly there was no need to remind my generation that having an actual job in my beloved country is nearly impossible, in particular for young people (and over there people are considered young until their 40s...)