Dimmi di Te - Chiara Gamberale

 

A book that I picked only because I liked its cover (again) and because I had vaguely heard of its author because of a radio program of hers. 

While I don't dispute the personal sufferings of the author, and the complexity of raising a child as an old(er) semi-single mother, I really didn't enjoy this romanced autobiography of hers. 

At best, this book's purpose is chiefly a therapeutic exercise for Gamberale. Good for her, but it doesn't make for a great for me, and her attachment to many more or less significant figures from her high-school decades before left me quite untouched. 

At worst, this book capitalizes on the sufferings of her high-school best friend, and on the life of her young daughter. Which just doesn't sit right with me. 

The Bee Sting - Paul Murray

 

Beware the Ides of March. 

But also, beware the "instant classic" (The Washington Post). 

This is a novel that I thought desperately tried to be a Great American Novel. Except it isn't great, and it isn't American (on the plus side, it's a novel). As I was reading it, I often had to remind myself that the book wasn't set in the American Midwest, but actually in Ireland. And when I thought the plot was getting almost incestuous, well, it got even more incestuous. 

On the plus side, it was a pretty quick and almost effortless read. At times it was even quite pleasant, but between that and considering this one of the best novels of the last few years there's a big difference!

Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney

And this is the second book book by Sally Rooney that I read. 

I suspect my impressions of it were influenced by sky-high expectations after having read Intermezzo and by the fact that I read Conversations with Friends at a time in which we were beginning to gut out a house, living with an army of burly builders working around us, and sleeping in blankets covered in dust. 

Still, I was somewhat underwhelmed by this book. While I still recognised Rooney's ability to explore social relations and write a good book with something somewhere between a very simple plot and no plot at all, I ultimately couldn't bring myself to be interested in the lives of these characters, be them young artsy types trying to find their way into the world, or middle-aged rich people who are a bit bored and/or a bit dysfunctional. 

Mon Assassin - Daniel Pennac

 

The book that I didn't know I needed. Seriously. The last novel by Pennac had left me so unmoved and disappointed, but this short book (not quite a novella, not fully an autobiography) brought me peace and closure. 

It is extremely tactful, and I ultimately see it as an attempt by Pennac to exorcise some of his demons, talk about loss, give his real-life friends and unorthodox family members their chance to take centre stage, and in general come to terms with the end of his career and, in the not so distant future, eventually the end of his own life. 

Unfortunately, I'm rather certain that in a couple of years he'll be persuaded to write something else, or someone will unearth an early draft of an unfinished novel and decide to publish it, or something equally unappealing. And sadly Pennac will have his own Baugmartner or, possibly worse, Silverview or,  possibly worse, Go Set a Watchman. 

Look at Me - Jennifer Egan

 

After liking-without-loving A Visit from the Goon Squad I decided to read another Egan novel as I had just read a couple of books by Rachel Kushner and felt that I might as well read something more by the another widely acclaimed American female author. 

And this one absolutely blew me away. It had all the markers of a "great American novel" for me. Part suburbia, part big city. A healthy dose of criticism of systemic flaws. A main characters who is complex, multifaceted and, ultimately, oddly relatable. 

Yet, the novel's greatest accomplishment is probably its being ahead of the times, with a character in Z who just about predates the drama of 9/11 and whose life shares so many similarities with what we know of those of many other terrorists who have emerged ever since. 

Due - Enrico Brizzi

 

It must be hard to have written one hugely successful book, and follow it up with a list of very uninspiring novels, and Brizzi was just trying to milk (again) the one thing that gave him fame. 

I was expecting/hoping this book would be a sequel covering Aidi and Alex's lives 30 years after their high-school years - that kind of nostalgic operation (kind of like in Trainspotting 2) I could have got behind. 

Instead, this is an immediate sequel of Jack Frusciante E' Uscito dal Gruppo and it just doesn't work for me - Aidi is boring, on a high-school exchange that I look down upon because I am a snob, in a place that I find uninspiring, and the charm of interrail travelling and backpacking like Alex has long lost its appeal for me. 

Still, I'm reasonably happy to have read this because, while this is not a good book by any measure, I liked the original one enough to bring myself to care a bit about its sequel and it was obviously an easy way to pass a day or two during the Christmas holiday. Still, Enrico Brizzi, please, move on...

Divorare il Cielo - Paolo Giordano

 

I got this book as I had (surprisingly) loved Tasmania last year and, after all, Paolo Giordano had written one of the biggest Italian editorial successes of the 21st century. 

Instead, with Divorare il Cielo we have a very early, but very serious, contender for "worst book I've read in 2025". 

The plot is poor and jumps the shark about 25 times. The characters are either unbearable, unbelievable, or underdeveloped (in particular every woman other than the narrator), but preferably all three. Somehow, the book also made me sincerely uninterested in Apulia, which is now widely considered one of the coolest regions of Italy. 

It really felt like Giordano was trying to present himself as the Italian Franzen here, but fell way short in all things that make Franzen great, and just went way more wrong in all the things that at times make me question Franzen's actual greatness...

My Friends - Hisham Matar

One of the many books suggested by my mother, and yet again one of her many on-point suggestions. I greatly enjoyed reading this, but for me it was very much a story of two halves. 

The first half, with the main character's walk from King's Cross to his home in Shepherd's Bush was a work of art, introducing me to something I didn't know about (the shooting from the Libyan embassy in 1984), talking about something that I feel I know so well (that part of London, in particular the shout-out to the caryatids of St Pancras New Church, right outside my beloved undergraduate student hall), and making me think about some of my favourite London writers (Kureishi obviously, given the period being discussed and the immigrants' stories). 

The second half, however, was just a bit much. While it is true that wars are being increasingly fought by middle-aged men, I found it a bit far fetched and hard to buy into that two semi-intellectuals would find themselves at the forefront of the violent actions of the initial phases of the Libyan Civil War, and  reading about their discovery of Ghedaffi in hiding really appeared excessive to me. 

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). 

The Little Friend - Donna Tartt

 

It took me about a month to read this book. In part because of its fairly imposing size, but mostly because the book is full of snakes. Literally to the brim. And if my phobic self had realized that before the start, I wouldn't have even started this novel...

Yet, I enjoyed it more than The Goldfinch. It's a bit of a 21st century Stand By Me with a hint of To Kill a Mockingbird, detailing the stories that children tell themselves to explain events around them, the risks that they obliviously run and their first experiences of love or something resembling that. 

Needless to say, though, it's not exactly the kind of novel that makes me want to visit rural Mississippi anytime soon, and not just (though mostly) because of the snakes. 

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...). 

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

An almost great American novel. Which is both high praise and highly frustrating. 

What makes it great is the eponymous protagonist, his relationship with the family of the narrator, and the chapters set in school and the New England backdrop. 

What doesn't make it great is the dull narrator (and the decision to dedicate so many pages to his contemporary life), the allegorical/metaphorical/mystical parts (just not my thing), and the fact that the ominous presence of the Vietnam War in the background has worked better for other authors (Auster, for instance). 

And from what my mom was telling me of John Irving I was expecting more fireworks in the plot, but this is probably one of his (relatively) sober novels. 

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.  

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. 

Il Colibrì - Sandro Veronesi

 

Granted, my parents had warned me (I had just forgotten about it, but hey...), yet I was expecting more from Veronesi. Not sooo much more, but at least a little more. 

This book is light as its titular hummingbird. And I don't mean that as a good thing. The long protracted story of a pretty uninteresting main character left me rather untouched. The sappy final scenes of love, forgiveness and hope openly annoyed me. 

At most, this is the sort of book that I think one should read over the span of a couple of afternoons at the beach. Except that I don't like beaches, so I don't think this book really has any space in my life, and will have very little space in my memory. 

Moon Palace - Paul Auster

 

The one time in my life I had to request a renewal of a library book loan (it took me more than two weeks to read it!) and it was a Paul Auster novel...

Testament to the fact that we had a lot going on (family holidays, in part, and a huge kitchen refurb waiting for us back home), but also to the fact that this wasn't my favourite Auster book. 

Had it not been for the fact that I've read most of his other works, I would have probably enjoyed Moon Palace a lot more, but (un?)fortunately I have read most of his other works, and had already come across much better renditions of his traditional "cultured and troubled Columbia student is confused and tossed around by chance and mysterious fortuitous encounters". 

Lessons - Ian McEwan

 

Now here's an author (like Ali Smith) who seems more unable than me to let Brexit go, and this is saying a lot. 

And here's an author (like Ali Smith) who probably tries to pack too much in too few pages. The story of Roland and Miss Cornell, for me, would have been enough. The persistence of his memory of her throughout his life, and her unexpected brief return, would have made this a great novel. 

Turning the book into a brief history of Britain from WWII to today as seen through the eyes of one person, on the other hand, was stretching it a bit. Even when I find myself agreeing with most of McEwan's points about British politics and society, I don't really see the need to read about them. They are not surprising, they are not particularly engaging. Not for me at the very least. 

A shorter novel on the frenzy, trauma, and confusion caused (?) by Miss Cornell would have ranked among McEwan's finest. Instead, I consider this a great "intro to the current British divisions" for my mum, along the lines of some of Ali Smith's recent books and Jonathan Coe's Middle England. With the added bonus of having large passages set in Suffolk (where we were coincidentally holidaying as I was reading the book) and mentioning Mick Jagger's stint as an LSE student. 

Summertime - J.M. Coetzee

  

I was in need of a wonderful Coetzee book after the disappointment of the two "Jesus" books, and I got exactly what I needed thanks to the (limited) offer of the Southwark e-library. 

I don't think there is anything wrong with a bit of self-celebration, in particular for an author as famously reclusive as Coetzee, and the idea of telling a fictionalized story of his own life through the eyes of people he interacted with is just great. 

What's a bit more (well, more than a bit) on the bizarre/morbid side of things is that in the novel John Coetzee is supposed to have died, and that's the reason why the story of his life is being put together with the help of other people and extracts from his writings. But hey, possibly a bit creepy to be writing while thinking about yourself as dead, but it seems to have worked for him!

Gli Interessi in Comune - Vanni Santoni

  

I normally don't even smile at books whose covers promise to make you "laugh out loud". Gli Interessi in Comune didn't make such promises, but it was without a doubt the funniest book I've read in years. 

The title already encapsulates what the book is about; vignettes from a group of friends who share common interests: Magic: the Gathering (because they are nerds after all), loitering at the local bar and, most of all, an almost academic research into all possible drugs - legal or not. 

My wife was surprised to hear me laugh by myself every 5 minutes as I was reading this book, and so was I. Yet, this is not just a funny book, it's surprisingly deep and it offers and insight into the "normal" lives of the characters outside of their psychedelic loops. And much like in Trainspotting, a lot of these druggies turn up alright in the end, though a fair few of them don't. And I still struggle to believe that someone could pull a book like this out of the Tuscan province.

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

  

Until a few weeks ago I had never even heard of Jennifer Egan (bad me, she's a Pulitzer winner after all!). Then I met a colleague who is writing a PhD thesis on DeLillo, Auster, Whitehead and... Jennifer Egan, so, given the other three names, I figured I might as well read something by her before talking about literature around the office again. 

It's a pleasant read and a nice series of interwoven short stories, full of (not so) veiled criticism aimed at the music industry and our general society and humorous moments. At the same time, though, I can't quite bring myself to consider "pop-rock" literature as something of particular literary significance, probably because I read (and watched) a fair bit of similar things growing up. 

Entertaining, yes. Thought-provoking, relatively. Pulitzer-worthy, maybe not...