Book Review: The wife - M. Wolitzer

“Joe once told me he felt a little sorry for women, who only got husbands. Husbands tried to help by giving answers, being logical, stubbornly applying force as though it were a glue gun. Or else they didn’t try to help at all, for they were somewhere else entirely, out walking in the world by themselves. But wives, oh wives, when they weren’t being bitter or melancholy or counting the beads on their abacus of disappointment, they could take care of you with delicate and effortless ease.” 

What would a woman sacrifice for her husband? or better, what would a woman sacrifice to ensure the image she builds about her husband remains intact?
A beautifully written prose, it took me a while to get into the plot and the story to be honest, but then I was hooked to it, to the unusual relationship between Joan and Joe, her being a step behind him in his literary success, without ever leaving his side. Her bearing his unfaithfulness, his detached ways with their children.
A novel that it is not easy to digest and to agree on Joan's behavior, but surely a book that make you reflect on marriages and their peculiar dynamics.

“Maybe she had "no more books left inside her," as people often sorrowfully say about writers, envisioning the imagination as a big pantry, either well stocked with goods or else wartime-empty.” 

Overall rating:  Abandoned   Plot: 6     Writing style: 5    Cover:  7

Title: The wife

Author: Meg Wolitzer
Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 224
Publication year: 2004

The Plot:
Joe and Joan Castleman are en route to Helsinki. Joe is thinking about the prestigious literary prize he will receive there, while Joan is plotting how to leave him. For too long she has played the role of supportive wife, turning a blind eye to his misdemeanours, whilst quietly being the keystone of his success. But behind the compromises, the disappointment and disillusionment there lies a secret…

The Author:
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel Belzhar. Wolitzer lives in New York City.

Book Review: La vita fino a te - M. Bussola

- Nazionalità? - ha detto il vigile. - Italiana, - ha detto l’uomo. - Come no, - ha detto la signora. L’uomo ha guardato la signora, si è tolto il cappello da lavoro che aveva in testa. - Signora, - ha detto, - io abito qua da diciassette anni. Mia moglie è italiana e ho tre figlie che vanno a scuola. Lavoro anche la domenica. Sono italiano. - Mi immagino che lavori che fate, - ha detto la signora. Io avevo i sacchetti in mano, li ho posati a terra e mi sono avvicinato all’uomo. - Del resto, - ho detto apposta a voce alta e ridendo, - è risaputo che le donne non sanno guidare. E la domenica dovrebbero stare a casa a spadellare, non nei parcheggi a rompere i coglioni! - Ma come si permette?! - ha urlato la signora, indignatissima. - Niente, signora, - ho detto, - volevo solo buttare lì anch’io un pregiudizio a caso.  "

Piacevole da leggere, Bussola scrive della vita di tutti i giorni in modo semplice e dritto al punto.
Ma, io pensavo che questo fosse un romanzo, non un'altra serie di pensieri random - molti dei quali gia' pubblicati su facebook.
Quindi un libro piacevole, ma forse di libro non si puo' parlare, non so se l'avrei preso avendo saputo che non era un romanzo ma un riassunto di post e pensieri.

Overall rating:  6   Plot: NA     Writing style: 6    Cover:  6

Title: La vita fino a te

Author: Matteo Bussola
Publisher: Einaudi
Pages: 202
Publication year: 2018

The Plot:
Matteo Bussola riconosce ciò che di straordinario si annida nelle cose ordinarie perché le guarda come se accadessero per la prima volta, come se sentisse sempre la vita pulsare in ogni cellula. Ed è con quello sguardo che racconta di relazioni sentimentali, l'istante in cui nascono, il tempo che abitano. Lo fa mettendosi a nudo, ricordando gli amori passati, per ripercorrere la strada che lo ha portato fino a qui, alla sua esistenza con Paola e le loro tre figlie. Soprattutto, lo fa specchiandosi nelle storie di ciascuno: quelle che incontra su un treno, o mentre sbircia dal finestrino della macchina, o seduto in un bar la mattina presto. Quelle che incontra stando nel mondo senza mai dare il mondo per scontato, e che la sua voce intima e familiare ci restituisce facendoci sentire che sta parlando esattamente di noi.

The Author:
Matteo Bussola è nato a Verona nel 1971. Ha conseguito la laurea in architettura a Venezia ma poi ha preferito dedicarsi alla carriera di fumettista. Lavora con diverse case editrici di fumetti, italiane e straniere: con Eura Editoriale (oggi Aurea), Star Comics, con le case editrici francesi Soleil e Humanoides Associés. Nel 2011, insieme a Paola Barbato, crea il web-comic "Davvero", poi pubblicato sotto il marchio Star Comics. Nel 2012 inizia a collaborare con Sergio Bonelli Editore, entrando a far parte dello staff di disegnatori della serie Adam Wild. Tiene una rubrica settimanale su "Robinson" dal titolo Storie alla finestra, e conduce con Federico Taddia un programma settimanale su Radio 24, I padrieterni, sul ruolo dei nuovi padri.
Vive a Verona con la compagna, tre figlie e due cani. 
Il suo primo libro, Notti in bianco, baci a colazione è pubblicato da Einaudi (2016), mentre nel 2017, sempre per Einaudi, esce Sono Puri i loro sogni. Lettera a noi genitori sulla scuola, e nel 2018 La vita fino a te.

Book Review: The heart's invisible furies - J. Boyne

Really good start, gripping and interesting. The voice of this little boy, adopted by the weirdest couple. It becomes very tedious for me after the first quarter, all about "boys talks" and politics

Overall rating:  Abandoned   Plot: 6     Writing style: 5    Cover:  4

Title: The heart's invisible furies

Author: John Boyne
Publisher: Black Swan
Pages: 720
Publication year: 2017

The Plot:
Forced to flee the scandal brewing in her hometown, Catherine Goggin finds herself pregnant and alone, in search of a new life at just sixteen. She knows she has no choice but to believe that the nun she entrusts her child to will find him a better life.
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or so his parents are constantly reminding him. Adopted as a baby, he’s never quite felt at home with the family that treats him more as a curious pet than a son. But it is all he has ever known.
And so begins one man’s desperate search to find his place in the world. Unspooling and unseeing, Cyril is a misguided, heart-breaking, heartbroken fool. Buffeted by the harsh winds of circumstance towards the one thing that might save him from himself, but when opportunity knocks, will he have the courage, finally, take it?

The Author:
John Boyne was born in Ireland in 1971. The winner of three Irish Book Awards, he is the author of ten novels for adults, five for younger readers and a collection of short stories. The international bestseller The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was made into a Miramax feature film and has sold more than six million copies worldwide. His novels are published in over fifty languages. He lives in Dublin.

Book Review: Manhattan Beach _ J.Egan

Oh dear... I had so many expectations about this book, having read great reviews. And no, not for me, I had to put it down after the first 30 pages. I just could not get into it.
Maybe I will give it another try later in the year..

Overall rating:  ABANDONED    Writing style: 4    Cover:  7

Title: Manhattan Beach

Author: Jennifer Egan
Publisher: Corsair
Pages: 512
Publication year: 2017

The Plot:

Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Anna observes the uniformed servants, the lavishing of toys on the children, and some secret pact between her father and Dexter Styles

Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career as a Ziegfield folly, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a night club, she chances to meet Styles, the man she visited with her father before he vanished, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father's life, the reasons he might have been murdered.

The Author:

Jennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection.  Her new novel, Manhattan Beach, published last fall, has been awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.  Her last novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times book prize.  Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine.

Book Review: Greatest hits - L. Barnett

“Above all,” she recalls, “there was music, and there was Ivor, and there was her inability to tell where her love for one spilt over into her love for the other.”

Loved it, loved it, loved it! One of the few novels that made me cry, probably the third or fourth in my all life as a reader.
First of all, it is written beautifully, with a musicality and a depth that it would have been a pleasure even if the plot was not so good. Laura Barnett's style is rich yet never pompous, it can describe situations, places and people in a way that make you really feel you are there, in the story.
And it is a writing style that gave me a lot of emotions as it connected me so deeply to Cass Wheeler, the novel main character, from the anger and sadness of her childhood to the sparkles of becoming famous, to the devastation of her relationship and to her biggest sorrow.
So much despair, so much joy, Cass's story seems so real it could have been a biography, and yet it had the power to grip me as if it was a crime novel, eager to know how it ends, what happens next.
I am not a musical person at all, and yet, because of this stupendous style, I could feel in my guts Cass's need to do music, to write songs, to transfer her feelings in words and notes.
I loved Barnett's previous novel - the Versions of us - but I think, if possible, I even loved Greatest hits even more and I am absolutely in love with her writing style.

Overall rating:  10    Plot: 10   Writing style: 10    Cover:  8

Title: Greatest hits

Author: Laura Barnett
Publisher: W&N
Pages: 464
Publication year: 2017

The plot:
A musician born in 1950, Cass is now taking one day to select the sixteen songs in her repertoire that have meant the most to her. And behind each song lies a story - from the day her mother abandoned her, to her passionate first love, to the moment she lost everything. The dreams, the failures, the second chances. But what made her disappear so suddenly from her public life and, most importantly, can she find her way back?

The Author:
Laura Barnett was born in 1982 in south London, where she now lives with her husband. She studied Spanish and Italian at Cambridge University, and newspaper journalism at City University, London.
Her bestselling debut novel, The Versions of Us, was published in May 2015 and has been translated into 23 languages. TV rights have been optioned by Trademark Films. 
Her second novel, Greatest Hits, is published on 15 June 2017, and features a unique collaboration with singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams on an album to be released alongside the book.
As a freelance arts journalist, features writer and theatre critic, Laura has worked for the Guardian, the Observer, the Daily Telegraph and other national newspapers and magazines. Her rst non- fiction book, Advice from the Players – a compendium of advice for actors – was published in 2014 by Nick Hern Books.

Book Review: A misura d'uomo - R. Camurri

«Non ne hanno mai parlato della malattia, non hanno mai parlato di niente, a lui questo piace, la mancanza di domande, il restare nel presente, il non guardare al futuro, o al passato; ama la semplicità, l’equilibrio fragile che si sono costruiti»

Ancora non ho capito se questo romanzo mi e' piaciuto o meno. I primi due capitoli si, sicuro, mi hanno intrigata molto, il personaggio di Davide e' tenero all'inizio, poi iniziano le problematiche.
Ho trovato in generale il romanzo troppo frammentario, troppo il non detto per prendermi completamente. La figura di Anela, poi, non l'ho proprio capita, una specie di fantasma di sottofondo senza arte ne' parte.
Un romanzo sul rovinarsi la vita con l'acol e su amicizie etiliche. Purtroppo non i ha lasciato nulla di piu'.

Overall rating:  5     Plot: 5     Writing style: 6      Cover:  6

Title: A misura d'uomo

Author: Roberto Camurri
Publisher: NN Editore
Pages: 168
Publication year: 2018

The plot:
Fabbrico è un piccolo paese sulla mappa dell'Emilia, poche anime, due strade, i campi intorno, il cielo d'ovatta. È qui che nasce l'amicizia tra Davide e Valerio, ed è qui che una sera d'estate Davide incontra Anela e se ne innamora. Anela diventa il perno e lo scoglio su cui si infrange la loro amicizia. Così Valerio a un certo punto sceglie di andarsene, Davide si perde e perde quell'unica, preziosa occasione di felicità. A Fabbrico vivono anche gli altri personaggi di questa storia: Elena e Mario, Maddalena, Luigi, Giuseppe e la vecchia Bice, che al bar accoglie tutti per un caffé o una sambuca.

The Author:
Roberto Camurri è nato nel 1982, undici giorni dopo la finale dei Mondiali a Madrid. Vive a Parma ma è di Fabbrico, un paese triste e magnifico di cui è innamorato forse perché è riuscito a scappare. È sposato con Francesca e hanno una figlia. Lavora con i matti e crede ci sia un motivo, ma non vuole sapere quale. Scrive da pochi anni, anche se avrebbe voluto scrivere da sempre. A misura d’uomo è il suo primo romanzo.

Book Review: The child - F. Barton

"Headlined BABY’S BODY FOUND, two sentences told how an infant’s skeleton had been unearthed on a building site in Woolwich, not a million miles from Kate’s east London home. Police were investigating. No other details. She tore it out for later. The bottom of her bag was lined with crumpled scraps of newspaper – ‘It’s like a budgie cage,’ her eldest son, Jake, teased her about the shreds of paper waiting for life to be breathed into them. Sometimes whole stories to be followed up or, more often, just a line or a quote that made her ask, ‘What’s the story?’Kate re- read the thirty words and wondered about the person missing from the story. The mother. As she walked back with the coffee cups, she ticked off her questions: Who is the baby? How did it die? Who would bury a baby?"

Wow, what a pageturner, even better than Fiona Barton's previous novel - The widow (read my review here).
The plot is absolutely gripping, loads of different stories that interlink and an ending that I was not expecting at all!
Kate, the journalist, also main character of The widow, is great, I love her tenacity and passion for her work and how she goes about getting people to trust her.
The novel is written with three main voices, sometimes four, Kate's and the two women who think the baby found could be linked to them. The different voices give the book an interesting pace and the different psychological trait of the three women.
A crime/journalism novel absolutely worth reading!

Overall rating:  8     Plot: 8     Writing style: 8      Cover:  6,5

Title: The child

Author: Fiona Barton
Publisher: Corgi
Pages: 448
Publication year: 2017

The Plot:
When a newborn's skeleton is discovered on a building site it only makes a paragraph in an evening newspaper - but for three women it's impossible to ignore.

The Author:

Fiona Barton's debut, The Widow, was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and has been published in thirty-five countries and optioned for television. Her second novel, The Child, was a Sunday Times bestseller. Born in Cambridge, Fiona currently lives in south-west France.

Previously, she was a senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at the Daily Telegraph, and chief reporter at the Mail on Sunday, where she won Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards.

While working as a journalist, Fiona reported on many high-profile criminal cases and she developed a fascination with watching those involved, their body language and verbal tics. Fiona interviewed people at the heart of these crimes, from the guilty to their families, as well as those on the periphery, and found it was those just outside the spotlight who interested her most . . .

May 2018 Wrap up

May, a month of great sunshine and powerful thunderstorms, 

great thrillers and a couple of novels I had to abandon. 

(click on the titles for full mini reviews)

Il rumore della pioggia - G. Paoli

Un bel giallo con un simpatico toscanaccio come protagonista

Rating:  7 out of 10

Essere vivi - C. Comencini

Un argomento difficile, un libro crudo, duro, complesso.

Rating:  6,5 out of 10

A Chloe per ragioni sbagliate - C. Durastanti

Abbandonato dopo il primo capitolo, non fa per me.

Rating:  Abbandonato

Today will be the day - M. Semple

The bad/over the top version of the great Where'd you go. Disappointing.

Rating:  Abandoned

The great alone - K. Hannah

The wild Alaska and a story of love, violence and strength. Beautiful.

Rating:  8 out of 10

Still life - L. Penny
A very good crime novel first in a serie, great main inspector.
Rating:  7,5 out of 10

La bestia nel cuore - C. Comencini
Delusione, Troppi dettagli cinematografici, storia troppo pesante.
Rating:  5 out of 10

Then she was gone - L. Jewell
Fast pace psychological thriller, gripping but quite strange. Good escape read.
Rating:  6 out of 10

The Queen of Hearts - K. Martin
An engrossing medical drama full of secrets, friendship and love.
Rating:  7 out of 10

The child - F. Barton
Gripping plot, great main character, loved it!
Rating:  8 out of 10