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...

Telex from Cuba - Rachel Kushner

 

Having discovered that Rachel Kushner's Italian translator is a lady I met, I decided to read another one of her books (and didn't have too many reservations about reading it in translation). 

While I greatly enjoyed the writing, I felt that the book spent too much time setting the scene and providing historical background - probably because I'm reasonably familiar with the history of the Cuban revolution, partly because I teach about it, partly because I have watched The Godfather Part 2...

Still, once the plot "gets to the point" the book shares a number of similarities with many of my beloved suburban middle-class American novels, and that's a huge selling point. Also, it ultimately does a really good job of explaining how monoculture in general (and United Fruit in particular) messed up a country and its people. 

Donne di Tipo 1 - Roberta Casasole

 

Picked this book because of its cover. A staunch feminist colleague of mine (who has taught me a couple of valuable lessons) uses a picture by the same artist as her avatar, so I just assumed this book would have been at least insightful. 

Instead, this was without a doubt the worst book I've read this year. 

Obviously, you don't need to like a book's main character in order to like the book, but you have to find him/her at the very least remotely interesting. Instead, the book's protagonist is a selfish entitled brat with misguided ideas about her academic value. Still, I can find a way to live with that.  

What I can't live with is the constant feeling that the author finds her creation (and herself, by default?) hilarious. It's just irritating. 

Also: what kind of supposed feminist spends her time talking about how hot someone is?!?

Tutta la Vita che Resta - Roberta Recchia

 

One of the Italian books that I just have to read every now and again. Melodramatic to the ninth degree - with somehow managed crisis after somehow managed crisis and the very occasional brief interlude of something resembling calm. 

Yet, this is not the utterly unbearable A Little Life. I actually got to feel something for the characters, and in all this drama I didn't think that the author was simply riding on the readers' emotions (and their manipulation), but was actually telling a genuinely compelling story and touching on a variety of themes with skills. 

Obviously, a number of plot twists were rather predictable - ranging from the family eventually finding a way to patch things up, to the solution of the initial crime, to the disappearance of central yet ultimately expendable characters. Still, this remain a book that I enjoyed way more than what I had expected.  

Lucy by the Sea - Elizabeth Strout

 

I feel like I have written this before, but while I very much love the writing of Elizabeth Strout and the atmosphere that she is able to create with her books, all of them - perhaps with the exception of the ones about Olive Kitteridge - blur into one. Lucy by the Sea was a clear demonstration of that, as I remembered having read My Name Is Lucy Barton, but in spite of its title I couldn't for the life of me recall who Lucy Barton actually was...

I have yet to find a book whose handling of the recent pandemic I find compelling, perhaps because it's something that we have all lived through. On the plus side, at least this book was a clear upgrade compared to the rather miserable Day by Michael Cunningham. 

What I did like about this book, though, was the narrative arch of William (Lucy's husband). I must confess I was rather ticked off by the brave "knight in shining armour" (who at the same time has the foresight of "the stoic man of science"), but in the last few chapters it was really interesting to see his own daughters discuss with Lucy the probable selfish reasons behind some of his actions, and Lucy recognizing them - perhaps having known that was the case all along, and reclaiming her own agency.  

The New Life - Tom Crewe

 

A novel I literally just stumbled upon by coincidence, as I was looking for something at least somewhat inspiring in the catalogue of my Italian e-library (and yes, I did read this in translation - shame on me, the things I do for convenience...). What attracted me of this book was its title, its cover (yes, I do judge books by their cover!) and the fact that the author and I came very close to studying together. 

It took me two weeks to read this book, but really only because life got in the way in a pretty major way and we moved to a new house (a whole 200 mt down the road, but the move felt transatlantic). 

I appreciated this book for a variety of reasons. Its didactic nature when tackling the theme - and the acts - of homosexuality (in a way that wasn't too dissimilar from some of the works of David Leavitt), its ability to re-visit, re-shape and re-create history (and here the most immediate comparison for me would be Pat Barker, most likely because I've just finished reading her), and the degree of honesty with which it discusses the double-standards that queer men and women had to deal with in the late 19th century, much like in the early 21st. 

That said, in a way that is typical of many first novels, I also felt that the author didn't quite know how to wrap up his book, and the last couple of chapters feel abruptly squeezed in at the very least. 

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. 

I Giorni di Vetro - Nicoletta Verna

 

Once in a while, it's quite good to realize that there are contemporary Italian writers that, well, know how to write. Like so many in her generation, Verna appears to have a remarkably sombre approach to writing, but even then the story is truly a compelling one. 

The reader understands both the appeal and horror of the titular Vetro, and the deep flaws of his friend (and Redenta's father) get more and more disturbing as the pages turn. Yet, what stands out is the inspiring forms of resistance (be it to a regime, to societal norms, or to family members) that the book celebrates in what feels at times like a touching tribute to Fenoglio. 

And while the surprising spin towards the end of the book (the identity of the mysterious Diaz) is really rather expectable, the surprise in the very final pages (what happened at the ball that marked so much of Redenta and Bruno's lives) is truly surprising. 

The Regeneration Trilogy - Pat Barker

 

What an absolute work of art! And to think that Pat Barker studied history (what I teach...) at the university where I work, and I actually had to discover her because my auntie told my mom about her. In my defence, she did graduate a few decades before my arrival at least...

The Regeneration Trilogy is possibly the best WWI book(s) I have ever read. Barker has a truly unique way of describing, through her characters, the ugly beauty of war, how it plays with the minds of soldiers who can never leave war behind and are often attracted to it for various reasons even when given a chance to leave. 

Her ability to weave real history and fiction together in an inextricable mix is also remarkable, and the last few chapters of The Ghost Road are an agony to read, as the reader clearly knows how things are going to end for Billy Prior, the beautifully troubled and scarred main fictional character of the trilogy. 

Empty Hearts - Juli Zeh

I didn't quite know what to read at some point this summer, so I landed on another book by Juli Zeh as I had greatly enjoyed Unterleuten. 

Empty Hearts wasn't quite as good a read. The wacky premise (an agency that identifies, recruits and trains potential suicidal terrorists to then assign to organizations) reminded me a bit of some of Franzen's most original plot twists. The problem for me, however, was that it's something that becomes very quickly hard to sustain and would place any author in danger of having to jump the shark in order to reach some sort of conclusion. 

And ultimately Juli Zeh jumps the shark here, without great results (at least for me). 

Prophet Song - Paul Lynch

Every now and again I have to read a dystopian novel. And every now and again I have to be reminded that I don't really love them. Unless they are The Road. 

Prophet Song is undeniably good, but the fact that the dynamics of the frictions between the two warring factions are never discussed (the novel begins as the situation is already beginning to spiral out of control, with almost no explanations) made it quite hard for me to "buy into" the book. 

That said, I really was impressed by how the author makes the reader realize that so many of the main characters' decisions are, ultimately, wrong, yet dramatically understandable and justifiable. 

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

 

What a book!

And to think that I picked it up almost by chance, because I loved its title and the cover picture. Just like with James Baldwin (the world's most banal comparison, sorry!) I was astonished by how current it felt despite its year of publication. 

The exoticization of black people by many well-intentioned whites who then get scared (or sceptical, or bored) is something that I see - and am most likely guilty of - on a daily basis, as is the slipping through the cracks of formal education of countless black students. And let's not get started on the hopelessness of certain excessively cerebral approaches to politics of some people whose problem is not so much their privilege (though that's an undeniable fact), but rather their complete isolation and inability to imagine a world in which their idea(l)s are not the most important thing for everyone. 

Sono Mancato all'Affetto dei Miei Cari -Andrea Vitali

File this under "Italian book read because the title was appealing" (in this case the loose translation is "I died and left my loved ones"). Also file this under "very low expectation, and just read for harmless entertainment". 

If anything, the book did give me something more than I was expecting (which really wasn't much). It is quite well-written, and ultimately does a good job of explaining the position of everyone in this clashing family and how everyone is both in the right and in the wrong most of the time. 

Bonus points for not pretending that the narrator's death at the end was a surprise (it was in the title!) malus points for having a dead man narrating the story (for me it didn't work in Sunset Boulevard, it was unlikely that it would work here...). 
 

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). 

Fame d'Aria - Daniele Mencarelli

 

Another book that I borrowed from my hometown's e-library chiefly because of its appealing title (loosely translatable as "hunger for air"). 

Because of the themes it deals with (a desolate father running away with a disabled child who is growing into a man, the poverty of those who have a job and because of that are not supported by the state, the drama of the daily challenges that families on the brink have to face) one can't not like the book. 

Yet, it also reads as excessively melodramatic (or perhaps excessively influenced by the well-meaning values of the Italian petit-bourgeoisie) to really leave a mark on me, or go beyond being the kind of book that one has to read every now and again.