Uno, Nessuno e Centomila – Luigi Pirandello

How dreadfully boring! Seriously, I understand this book is meant to be one of the greatest Italian 20^th century novels, but can we all just agree that it’s a 150-page yawn in the 21^st century?

So, Vitangelo Moscarda (even his name is dreadful) is a loan shark and is having second thoughts about his life and his identity. So what? 90 years after the book’s publication all its brilliant points are just so utterly trite. I got really happy when towards the end he got mortally wounded – knowing that there were still a few pages to go I was hoping that the first-person narrator would then start telling some bizarre after-life tale that could add a bit of flair to this novel. Sadly, Pirandello just seemed to use the term “mortally wounded” rather inappropriately, as Vitangelo survives…

Or maybe I’m just being harsh because Pirandello was fundamentally a Fascist?!?

Il Fu Mattia Pascal – Luigi Pirandello

One of those books that Italian students are forced to read (and hate) in their final year of high-school. Luckily I had left for Canada by then, and only read Il Fu Mattia Pascal well after the end of my Ph.D. I wouldn’t say that I loved it (nobody in his/her same mind could love this book), but I did definitely enjoy it more than what I expected.

Much of the book is set in the towns on the Italian Riviera where I used to go to when I was a kid, and I loved that. Despite the fact that, like pretty much every other Italian, I already knew the plot and at least a number of its twists, the book was still a nice read.

And call me romantic (something which I’m really not), but I like the fact that book goes full circle, and that the main character ends up feeling the call of his own hometown.