Il Sentiero dei Nidi di Ragno – Italo Calvino

A few years ago I bought for just a couple of Euros the complete works of Calvino. I got excited and thought I was going to read them all, then quickly got bored. Il Sentiero dei Nidi di Ragno, however, is special. Not so much because it’s about the Resistance against Italian Fascism, but mostly because it’s an entirely different Calvino from the one I was used to – not fully realist (despite the fact that the novel has been considered neorealist by some), but not even completely fantastical.

The novel is touching and deep. It offers an allegoric portrayal of the internal divisions of Italian partisans that is both sad and accurate at the same time. The character of Cugino (Cousin) is the kind of rock we all wish we could have in our lives.

Yet, in spite of all this, Il Sentiero dei Nidi di Ragno – probably because is focuses on the story of what is, at the end of the day, just a kid – lacks the elements of violence that to me are so essential to Resistance novels. After all even Calvino himself admitted that the book his entire generation would have dreamt of writing was actually Fenoglio’s Una Questione Privata.

The Postman – Antonio Skármeta

A novel that I bought with my dad as a Christmas gift for my mom (the only book I ever recall buying in a supermarket and not in a bookshop). I still remember my dad explaining to me that Massimo Troisi, the actor who played the titular postman in the movie taken from the novel, was a wonderful artist who died right after finishing the film.

When I read it as a teenager the book made want to get into poetry. I obviously tried with Neruda first, then followed it with the Poètes maudits, Pessoa, Lorca, Kavafis and many others, but to no avail. I was probably too shallow for poetry back then. I should try again, but I’m afraid I’m not much deeper than I was back then.

Skármeta’s novel is about Chile, about its most illustrious poet (Neruda, clearly), and about the poetry of the everyday life of the Chileans. There are plenty of novels in which important historical figures mentor some young and uneducated locals, and they often run the risk of becoming trivial. This novel avoids that. Mario, Neruda’s postman, does not evolve into a luminary of the literary world, and probably this is the reason why the novel isn’t banal, just touchingly beautiful. If at first his inability to express his feelings and the need to recur to Neruda’s poems is a bit too Cyranoesque, some of Mario’s simple thoughts are actually reflections of very serious issues, both political and literary (after all, does poetry belong to those who write it or to those who use it?).

Ti Prendo e Ti Porto Via – Niccolò Ammaniti

My biggest high-school crush, the one who, quite literally, crushed my heart, gave me this book. It wasn’t even my birthday. I thought it meant she was mine. I was clearly wrong.

Probably because of the mood I was in as I read the book, this is my favourite Ammaniti novel. It does have some gory pulpy sections (like the idea of throwing a radio in a bathtub to electrocute a teacher – something not even the most sociopathic bully would dream of doing, hopefully), but they are few and far between so actually end up being just funny interludes.

Of the two main male characters, one is clearly a jerk, but the other is absolutely adorable in his sadness and his desire to change his life around despite his very young age. Back when I read the novel, it gave me hope for both Italy and Italian literature. Worry not, in both cases I’ve lost most of it by now.

Il Prete Giusto – Nuto Revelli

Another wonderfully moving book by Nuto Revelli. And yet another one about Italian Fascism (in my defence, I hadn’t written about one of those in a while).

Similarly to Il Mondo dei Vinti, this is oral history at its finest. However, Raimondo Vitale, isn’t like the poor peasants of the other masterpiece by Revelli, he is a man capable of shaping his own destiny (at least to an extent) and to help others. The word “giusto” in the title does not signify that Viale was a just man, but that he was – rightfully – named “Righteous among the nations” because of the help he gave to persecuted Jewish families during the Second World War.

This is a book that students in their final year of high-school should be forced to read (in Italy and France, at least), but again I’m afraid we’re not going to run the risk of that happening anytime soon. So bring on pointless feuillettons from the early 19^th century (yes, to this day I am still very fond of Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi)

To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway at his drunk and macho finest. And I mean it as a compliment. Yes, quite a lot of his writing is now dated, but there is nothing wrong with enjoying a read from another era, despite the fact that – like pretty much every remotely sensible person – I have serious doubts about Hemingway’s character.

This is probably the most political Hemingway novel that I’ve ever read (after all he was writing it during his period as a “fucking tourist” in the Spanish Civil War – I am again quoting the comments of a commander of the International Brigades during a Q&A session after a lecture at my school). The reader likes Harry Morgan and doesn’t want him to necessarily succeed, but at least s/he wants him to keep on finding ways to get by.

And while maybe excessively blatant, the metaphor of the rich American destroying Harry’s equipment and then running away without paying is really quite powerful (and sadly painful).