Le Madri Non Dormono Mai - Lorenzo Marone

 

A book that I read on my phone as I couldn't really carry anything bigger with me as I jogged for 800 km along the Camino de Santiago this summer. 

And despite being dog-tired, I did manage to finish this and a couple of other novels, but none really impressed me that much. 

Crucially, with this book, I kept on wondering whether it is better for a man to tell the story of those Italian mothers who have to raise their children in jail, or whether we should wait for - dare I say it - a woman to do that. On top of that, the depiction of poverty and crime in Naples really feels gimmicky (here, as in so many other depictions). 

His Illegal Self - Peter Carey

 

This book was OK, which is a pretty sad statement for anything written by Peter Carey, but hey, you can't write something Booker-worthy every time. 

His Illegal Self  has a wild and pyrotechnic beginning, but once the actions shifts to Australia and the secrets of Che's "mom" are uncovered (a bit late to cause significant shockwaves) the book appears to settle, which is bizarre considering that I was expecting Carey to be - quite literally - at home there. 

And the ragtag Australian hippies are on the whole rather boring (or maybe it's just the nature of their anachronistically alternative lifestyle that doesn't attract me anymore?) and quite caricatural, which makes for many dull passages spent discussing the present and future of a former stray cat.  

Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro

  

Just because one wrote Never Let Me Go one doesn't necessarily need to write something that often reads like its rip-off. 

I guess dystopian novels sell, in particular in the current climate. And I guess once you win a Nobel prize you can pretty much do whatever you want. But in this case I'll do what I want too, and openly declare that I found Klara and the Sun to be as cold as its titular character, and I felt as detached from the plot and its twists as the Artificial Friend is detached from the reality around her (I wanted to like the novel, and Klara wants to understand and be part of the human world, but neither of us could).

Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt

I think I first got a copy of Angela's Ashes as a gift from one of my seniors in my Canadian high-school 12 years ago. I then handed it over to one of my juniors without reading it. And ever since I kept on finding it, unsurprisingly, in all sorts of second-hand bookshops. I think the copy I ended up reading was coming from the Stratford Books for Free, but I might be wrong. Anyway, as I am now finally running out of paperbacks so I decided it was time for me to read this.

And it was, well, alright. Some parts of it were positively interesting and entertaining, in particular when young Frank starts to find a way to make money, but the novelty of some others wore off rather quickly (I understand the author’s life was marked by his father’s alcoholism, but hundreds of pages of stories centred on various stages of drunkenness bored me a bit after a while).

I’ve read that a number of people questioned the truthfulness of the account, but I don’t really see the need for that. After all these are childhood memories, and if I think back to my own childhood I distinctly remember having tamed a lion in the mean streets of Bra, Italy, having arm-wrestled (and won) against Olympic athletes at the peak of their fitness, and having read the Odyssey in its original version when I was 5. But I might have got some of the details a bit wrong…

Another Part of the Wood - Beryl Bainbridge

And with this I, sadly, have exhausted my bookshelf's apparently never-ending supply of Bainbridge novels.

Another Part of the Wood is, yet again, an excellent read (although I should have thought twice about reading one of Bainbridge's books a couple of weeks before the birth of my first child, but hey...). Disquieting as always, the author gives an excellent portrayal of the various characters that are crammed in the rural huts and of their extremely dysfunctional relationships - it's kind of The Big Chill in Wales, with characters worried by even smaller issues (at least initially) and who have probably never liked each other anyway.

Much like with most of Bainbridge's novels, the reader knows from the start that tragedy is just around the corner - although this time it is presented in a very poetic way and doesn't have the gruesome end of that masterpiece that is Harriet Said...

Io Non Ho Paura – Niccolò Ammaniti

Probably the most successful book by Ammaniti, also owing to a movie by Gabriele Salvatores that was good but lacked the magic of some of his earlier works (Mediterraneo and Turné above all for me). I remember being utterly surprised by the fact that a translated copy of the novel had somehow made its way to the tiny Italian section in the tiny college library of our Canadian high-school, and I forced my then-girlfriend now-wife to read it when I found it.

The book tells the story of a kid and his discovery of a hideaway where a kidnapped boy is held prisoner. The contrast between the simple world of the local boys and that of the troubled adults is evident throughout the book,  but Ammaniti deserves credit for not idolizing and over-romanticizing youth. The book is a great, quick read – not something that will re-write (or has re-written) the history of literature as we know it, but something that can make the reader think about the turbulent 1970s and 1980s in Italy from a different perspective.

And with this I’m all caught up, having written something about all the books that I’ve loved, liked, or that I was meant to have loved and liked over the past few years. Or at least the ones that I can remember. From now on, updates will be a lot more sporadic (like a blog should be), particularly now that the new academic year is starting and that I am supposed to teach a course I have never taught before.

Io e Te – Niccolò Ammaniti

As an engagement present I got my wife an autographed copy of the book (I had met the author at the same literary festival already mentioned a bunch of times). Then I also got her a ring, otherwise she would have been upset.

The book (little more than a short story) much like Calvino’s Il Barone Rampante starts from an improbable premise that is, however, the dream of many children (Lorenzo doesn’t do what his parents think/want him to do, and hides in the basement for a week instead of going skiing with supposed friends). The novel is sweet, surely because Ammaniti refrains from being gory for once, and the treatment of the detox process of the other – unexpected – guest in the basement as seen from the eyes of a child is character-building without being patronizing like in Grossman’s Someone to Run With.

A great novel for a (short) train ride. Not much more than that, but still quite an enjoyable read.

La Compagnia dei Celestini – Stefano Benni

Another book by Stefano Benni. This is actually a novel and actually quite a proper one, for funny that it is.

Forget about quidditch, this book sees the introduction of the best fictional game ever: pallastrada (it could be loosely translated as streetball in English, but it has no relation to pick-up basketball). Not even the author actually fully understands the rules of the game, which seem to be in constant flux (although it has to be played on any kind of surface except for grass, the pitch needs at least a part of gravel, a hurdle like a tree of a rock, be on a slope, and possibly in a place where the ball gone out of bounds can roll away for miles – no player can be subbed out until 60% of his/her/its legs are covered in blood).

Yet, despite the hilarious play-by-play reports, the book is also quite deep: it ironically discusses the stories of the humblest Italian boys, it portrays an evil national oligarch years before the final rise to (political) power of Berlusconi, looks at the idiosyncrasies of the Catholic Church (and its head, the “great meringue”) and it is overall an allegory of the fight between good and evil (although its description of the German pallastrada team might not be particularly politically correct).

In short: this is just a great book.

The Book of Intimate Grammar – David Grossman

I thought I would have liked Grossman as much as I like Abraham B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz. Possibly even more: while Yehoshua has written some awful articles about how Syrian refugees are stealing the Palestinian jobs that nobody in Israel wants to do, David Grossman has had his life shattered by the death of his son in service for the IDF – the potential for a unique take on Israel and its contradictions almost unparalleled.

After reading Someone to Run With and finding it remarkably insipid I decided to give Grossman one more chance. However, even The Book of Intimate Grammar was rather dull. Who wants to read hundreds and hundreds of pages about the inner trouble of a young kid who can’t fit in and is at his happiest when he can picture himself as a promising young escapist? I might be heartless – no, I am surely heartless – but this book gave me no emotions…