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When No Plot Is Better Than Anything

When I was a student, I liked to wander the streets of the city plotting a story for my first feature film. I always dreamed of a one-ordinary-hero movie where you just follow a person in his daily life: how he gets on a bus, how he argues with his co-workers in the office, how he enjoys his glass of wine and a cigarette at a local corner bar absent-mindedly observing other quests or how he looks…

From Shuggie With Love

They say that children love their mother regardless of the circumstances. I’d tend to disagree but little Shuggie Bain is one hell of an example. The debut novel by Douglas Stuart, which won the Booker Prize in 2020, accurately portraits what’s it like to grow up with an alcoholic mother in the filthy and poor suburbs of the 80’s Glasgow. Why is it so realistic? Because Shuggie Bain is based on…

In A Game With The Mulish Constancy Of The World

I’ve grown up in a place where meeting a black person was an improbable probability. Nevertheless, I cried like a baby after finishing reading Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s Uncle Tom‘s Cabin, which was on my school English reading list, and I couldn’t perceive this awful phenomenon of segregation vaguely taught at history lessons. When I finally flew to New York twenty-five years ago to continue my…

The Young Will Get Tired, Too

The novel I overstepped my birthday with has been more than relevant.  It’s one thing to whimper about getting older and the other – to get under its skin. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout skillfully conveys what it is to be in your sixties or seventies. Just don’t be surprised that it won’t bring you to an entirely different universe.

Olive Kitterdgeis not a conventional novel with a…

Sometimes the coincidence does the trick. While reviewing new books released this March, I came across the description of a murder mystery by Peter Swanson titled Eight Perfect Murders. The plot included never disclosed perfect murders written by other eight authors. The last one mentioned was staring reproachfully at me from my book shelf where I’ve put it nearly ten years ago. It was Donna…

“A country where nothing ever happens and where nothing ever lasts”.  This is how Benito Mussolini had described his homeland exactly a century ago. But he didn’t live up to 2020 to hear about the current apocalyptic happenings in Italy that made the whole nation an infamous brand. Just let’s hope that the second part of Mussolini’s judgment justifies itself. And the sooner the better.   Mussolini…

Find The Dreamland Of Love

From the first page the tune of Sufjan Stevens’ Mystery of Love follows me throughout the reading. It was a perfect musical match for the acclaimed movie Call Me By Your Name directed by Luca Guadagnino and based on the novel of the same name written by André Aciman. And it still is for its sequel Find Me.

Those who read Call Me By Your Nameor at least watched the movie, were left wondering what…

Eight-Year Pursuit For The Unmarked Kind Of Desire

Forget Fifty Shades of Grey, they are so yesterday. If you wish to learn about true desire, better look for Lisa Taddeo‘s nonfiction Three Women. The author has documented her communication with three American women over the course of eight years, which then she constructed into three vivid narratives conveying  „vital truths about women and desire.“ Desire to love and to be loved. Despite being…

Time To Listen To The Aunt’s Account

Writing sequels to the novels is not an uncommon thing at all. Actually, this phenomenon is more often then it could be. But usually the novels are baked one after the other to keep the readers involved and interested. Except for some authors who make a full stop after the first book as it has been meant to be a standalone. However, decades pass and one day you hear there’s going to be a sequel…

He Comes Back With A Knife

The morning you wake up hangover but not from the booze you’ve willingly over-consumed last night but from the finished crime novel. You feel dizzy, still hoping that there’re a couple of pages more left, though your shattered mind sadly whispers of a final full stop. Say, it never happens? It does but only if this crime novel is written by the Norwegian detective writer Jo Nesbo and it’s the…

Never Trust The Milkman

The Emperor has no clothes. This was the first thought after reading Anna Burns’ Milkman, the novel that won the Man Booker Prizein 2018. Despite this prestigious literary award,  I felt as Sisyphus pushing up his rock uphill with every page and experiencing it roll down with disappointment for not getting any real action or losing train of thoughts in that long read of imitation of a…

The Game Without Vibrations

Sometimes when you don’t pay attention to book annotation, instead of a literary storytelling full of peculiar images and smashing ideas, you end up with a doctoral thesis on the origin and scope of digital revolution. This is a real case involving the most recent work of a popular Italian writer Alessandro Baricco called The Game.

The title is English, however, there’s no translation into…

With Hitler’s Meal Inside Your Veins

The novel I‘m going to review won‘t reach you till next year, if you‘re not fluent in Italian. But it‘s still worth your attention, as it discusses a very intriguing topic of our near past. The title of the book has caught my eye at Milan book fair and, tempted by its predicted international success, I took one of its copies home.

Le assaggiatrici (At The Wolf‘s Table) by Rosella Postorino tells…

A Modern Cop Called Macbeth

I‘m not sure, which is more favorable – to be familiar with the classic Shakespearean tragedy in advance or to have a fresh start with Jo Nesbo‘s Macbeth. The modern entry made for the Hogarth Shakespeare project by the world famous Norwegian author and the creator of the incredibly popular Harry Holeseries skillfully re-imagines the plot of a couple taking a path of blood and betrayal towards…

A Touching Story Of Hopelessness

Do you have to doubt your intelligence, if the name of the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize in literature doesn‘t ring a bell and his works have never been on your reading list? I did. The English novelist of Japanese origin Kazuo Ishiguro has already won the Man Booker Prize in 1989 for his novel The Remains of the Day, however, I was too young then to take a note. Hence his Nobel Prize in…

The end of the year and the most joyful holidays it brings are always linked to magic and unwritten superstitions. They float from generation to generation as a kind of an innocent game around the table, which means no harm. Just might help to hook up a sweetheart or gain an extra dollar but most probably protrude with laughter. Hannah Kent, the author of Burial Rites, shows another side of…

Last week I broke my promise, which I gave four years ago – to never ever again bother reading Dan Brown‘s novels. However, curiosity killed the cat again. His newly published Origin didn‘t prove to be an exception to the storytelling scheme that every Brown‘s reader already knows as a multiplication table since his The Da Vinci Code. The only positive thing about Dan Brown‘s novels is that they…