Pif is a very popular Italian comedic journalist, so my expectations for this novel of his were a little less than zero. Strickingly, what left me rather unmoved were the anecdotes about football and Sicilian sweets - often full of stereotypes and predictable. And what I actually found genuinely interesting were the author's/narrator's takes on Catholicism.
The Catholic church - and the Catholics'! - hypocrisy is often a very easy target for satire, but this is a deftly written book, and at the end of the day it's not satire. It's a reflection on our values, on what it means to be a good person (and/or a good Catholic), and the more saccharine passages of the book are still meaningful enough to be, at least, readable.
