Silvia Avallone's debut novel depicts a very different Italy from the one we see on our holidays. There are no vines or beaches with colourful umbrellas in the background. Instead, the world pulses around the steelworks, where the intense heat is slamming, and where someone occasionally loses a hand.
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ShareDrugs, but not snow
The children pee in the stairwells of apartment blocks, the men supplement their income with crime, and the women pop pills and grow old prematurely. The story's young protagonists, Anna and Francesca, realise that they have never seen snow, but they have seen drugs.
Can you choose a different life?
The book revolves around the girls' sudden discovery of themselves as sexual beings, and as the centre of the male gaze. But the book also contains a stinging social critique: why has this part of Italy been left to its own devices when the glittering tourist beaches are just across the water?
Life is strictly heterosexual and women are by nature submissive to men. The question follows you between the lines throughout the book: if you are born here, can you break away and choose a different life?
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The travel dream says:
Agreed, great book! She has great language, it's definitely worth reading. That she was born in 1984 and writes such a book is impressive.
26 July 2013 - 10:48
admin says:
Travelling dream, glad you liked the book too! I agree that it is a good debut by a young author.
26 July 2013 - 17:03