אין לי מושג איך הגעתי לקרוא אותו ומי המליץ עליו, אבל אני שמח שהגעתי. ספר איטלקי מקסים, ארוטי ומורכב שבבירור לא כולם אוהבים, אבל אני קראתי אותו תוך כמה ימים כשכל הזמן החיוך לא מש מפני. ( )

The author (and translator's) use of language is very nice, but a couple of idiosyncratic things about the book caused me to struggle with it a bit. First, the author persisted in changing narrative perspectives (third to first person) at random times, and even to different first person perspectives -- without warning the reader that it was happening. Second, there seems to be a bit of a sub-story about the author himself (not sure if it's actually true), that is mixed in with the main story. The way it jumped back and forth caused some narrative steam to be lost. Both of these significantly interfered with the flow and reading enjoyment of the book. ( )

853.914 BAR

Arriva la sposa giovane e lo sposo non c'è. Comincia un'attesa che coincide con la magia dell'educazione alla bellezza, all'erotismo, all'intelligenza dei sensi. La sposa giovane, la ragazza che ha fatto la solenne promessa di unirsi in matrimonio con il figlio. Il figlio però non c'è. E in Inghilterra, a visitare opifici tessili. Il maggiordomo modesto si aggira, esatto e cristallino come la sua lingua non verbale, a garantire i ritmi della comunità. Lo zio agisce e delibera dentro la nebbia di un sonno che non lo abbandona neppure durante le partite di tennis. La figlia porta la sua bellezza dentro un corpo di storpia.

This novella begins promisingly with an account of how the hours and the days pass in a mansion inhabited by some archetypes who are quite eccentric, and then moves on to a poetic episode of erotica. There the fun stops for a while; the lyrical passage of the days deteriorates into an excruciating description of a series of incongruous packages which arrive at the house, and the erotica is gone for quite a while. Though it's easy from the cover to think that one is going to be immersed in eroticism, it must be said that the erotic episodes are rather drowsy by the standards of Anglophone readers who are used to more rough-and-tumble stuff. The book's strengths are its occasional deployment of magic realism and when it sets out to, as mentioned, describe the passage of time. A mixed blessing is the eponymous narrator's usage of a mix of first- and third-person narrative which is striking when not confusing. The author makes little effort to flesh out his characters or bother with a plot, especially a plausible one. The author, especially toward the end, feints toward a theme of the process of authorship, but this idea was too oblique for me to see what he was trying to get at. This is an appealing book in many ways, but it will not please traditionalists. ( )