Van acquit

by Pietro Grossi

Dino is stratenmaker, net als zijn vader voor hem. Zwijgend tikt hij elke dag op zijn knieën kasseien de grond in. Vroeger droomde hij nog van reizen, maar tegenwoordig is hij tevreden met zijn werk en zijn grote liefde: biljart. Al zijn vrije tijd gaat op aan het maken van perfecte stoten op het groene laken. Aan de biljarttafel is hij op zijn gemak. Daar bestaat geen pech, geen ongeluk. Daar kan hij van de dingen op aan.

Maar dan krijgt Dino kort na elkaar twee berichten die zijn zekerheden in één klap wegnemen. Zijn vrouw blijkt onverwacht zwanger en zijn baas komt met slecht nieuws: het asfalt komt eraan. De hele stad wordt opnieuw bestraat; niet meer met kasseien, maar met stinkende zwarte troep. Na een reeks schokkende gebeurtenissen moet Dino inzien dat hij in zijn leven niet de juiste keuzes heeft gemaakt.

Genres: Fiction, Italy, Contemporary

175 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2007

Reviews

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grossi’s debut novel is nominally about billiards, but very much only nominally so. Protagonist Dino is a stonelayer and firmly entrenched in the practices of the past. As a result of the change, Dino's culture and life are both immediately and irrevocably altered, forcing him to move forward in unexplored directions. When his wife becomes pregnant also, he turns to his only outlet, the billiards parlour.
Style wins out over content in this short and often dark novel written with sparse prose about how we deal changes in life, however unwelcome they may be.

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoys books more when I feel like I've learnt something; in this case it was how to play Italian billiards.

[Bobby Mango · Rating 4 out of 5]

Made me sad but I wanted more

[Pascale · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the face of it, this is my kind of book: short, understated, with a surprising twist. And yet it didn't really work for me. Unable to conceive, Dino and Sofia have developed a pleasant routine of fantasizing about exotic travels, but when Sofia eventually falls pregnant, they are overjoyed. Dino is a stonecutter with a passion for billiards, and his wife is a seamstress. Both his job and his hobby appeal to his need for order and perfection. Respected by his small team as well as by Cirillo, the champion who runs the billiards parlor which functions as his second home, Dino happily sleepwalks through his life until his latest recruit, Blondie, confesses to him that he is the one who has twice vandalized the town hall in protest against the mayor's bribing scheme. Worried that he was identified the second time, Blondie, who is a foreigner, wants Dino's help in fleeing the area. Dino immediately agrees and succeeds in smuggling the young man out of town. When he gets home, he finds Sofia unconscious and bleeding. At the hospital, doctors manage to save the baby girl, but not the mother. Stunned but resilient, Dino decides to devote himself to raising little Grecia with the help of Rosa, the elderly florist next door. Subsequently he discovers that Sofia kept a journal of their conversations about far-flung journeys, but described them as having actually taken place. There's a vaguely fable-like quality to this tale which isn't anchored in any particular geographic or temporal reality, but it lacks subtlety and purchase. Blondie's pointless gesture of protest against corruption costs Dino his wife. Yes, that's ironical, but Grossi trivializes Sofia's death by half-baked reflections on chance and randomness. It's the same kind of book as Seethaler's "A Whole Life" and it disappointed me for the same reasons.

[Monica Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Salonica World Lit: Pietro Grossi's The Break
Pietro Grossi's The Break
Pietro Grossi~Italy

He remembered when as a child, without his aunt knowing, he would go with his dad from time to time to play a couple of games. He hadn't been particularly fascinated--as a friend of his had confessed years later he had been--by the sight of all those men joking among themselves, surrounded by a fog of cigarette smoke and the litter of wine bottles. He had found nothing to admire in those red noses and those yellowed teeth and those swollen bellies. What Dino hadn't been able to take his eyes off was the surface of the table--those hands forming a bridge on the baize to support the cue, those perfectly polished pieces of wood moving like silk over the hard, calloused workers' hands, the clacking of the cues on the surface of the balls and that sharp but muted noise of the balls of hitting each other and rebounding off the cushions, that imperceptible sound of the pins as they were knocked down by the balls and fell on the baize. And above all, the automatic, elegant movements of the men at the table. It was as if there, on that green fragment of the world, each man found his own dignity.

Italy's young novelist, Pietro Grossi, admits that his writing heroes are Ernest Hemingway and J. D. Salinger. The direct, robust prose of his last effort, a collection of three stories entitled Fists, is equally prominent in his new novel, The Break. But perhaps, in The Break, the is a slight maturation that Grossi has undergone. Still the man's man, focusing on topics such as boxing and billiards and centering his stories around male relationships (brothers, close friends, mentors), Grossi adds a bit of introspection and familial responsibility to the main character in The Break, Dino.

Dino is a solitary man, married and happy in his job as a brick layer for the city. His real passion, billiards, he tends to after work in the tavern of his friend and mentor, Cirillo. Ever Since Dino was a teenager, he wanted Cirillo to teach him all that he knew about the games of billiards. Cirillo tells him that as soon as he learns to hit the ball and have it return to the exact same place, every time, then he will teach him. And after time, Cirillo notices that Dino has evolved into an excellent billiards player:

Cirillo often watched Dino playing alone. A year earlier, he had even stood there watching him for an entire evening, without Dino noticing. And every time he watched him play, he wondered if Dino would ever beat him. It was hard to say, but one thing was certain--if it did ever happen, it would be a great game. Thinking about it, Cirillo couldn't really figure out why it was that Dino had never managed to beat him--he never missed a shot, always got the cover. If you looked closely--not that he would ever admit it--Cirillo actually made a few more mistakes than Dino did. And yet, when they came to add up the points, Cirillo's shots always scored more, and by the end of the game they weighed in the balance like blocks of granite.

Dino is a man who likes things to be structured, logical, and rational. This action leads to this and a string of these actions will produce this outcome. You lay bricks one after another, in precisely the right place, soon you will have a street. You shoot a ball at a specific angle, it will produce the perfect shot. So his life is filled with a series of concrete steps for him to obtain the result he is working for, but trouble arises when illogical things happen without reason. When he loses his job to the decision to bring tar into the town to pave all the streets, he is forced to either quit or work with tar. This goes against all that he is, all that his father, who was also a bricklayer, taught him. The machine that lays the tar becomes a intrinsic threat, an affront to who he is as an individual:

That vile beast appeared at the end of the street, puffing and shaking. A gigantic mouth full of black steaming sludge gaped open, as if stupefied, with pieces of tar dripping from it like some demonic slime. As the beast advanced, it was as if someone was twisting its guts with a pair of pliers, making it creak and groan with pain, forcing it to squeeze out into the sky that smoke as dense and black as effluent from the sewers. As it came closer, it gradually slowed down and sank into itself, hissing and blowing white steam from its ears. It gave a final belch, a lump of black sludge rolled down one side of its foaming mouth and settle on the rest of the steaming heap.

He sold me on the evils of tar in that paragraph alone. Besides the nefarious impact of tar on him and the town, other tragedy and truths besiege young Dino. What ultimately happens is that he learns to continue on with his life always returning to the safety and comfort of angles. He always returns to billiards.

Grossi also delivers some nice, subdued characters that buttress the reserved nature of Dino. Duilo, the old man who worked with Dino's father, and now serves as a surrogate father fofr Dino as well as a co-worker. Saaed, a brawny man who is also a skilled bricklayer and Blondie, a young silent kid who Dino takes a liking to because of his work ethic. And as for Dino's wife, Sofia, Grossi doesn't dwell on women characters nor does he make them extremely complex. Sofia is a subtle counterpart to Dino. Neither of them speak a great deal to each other or in general, but there is a tacit form of communication that Grossi shows well.

In a sense, this can be seen as a coming of age novel. Although it happens later in Dino's life, it is about how he copes with life once the life he had created for himself is dismantled. It has a languid, somber tone even though the language is direct. There is a ruminative quality that feels like the slower pace of a small Italian village which is oddly comforting to the reader. What a man finds hidden deep in himself can be surprising and empowering, and can lead him to see his life with a wider field of vision. Grossi's Dino learns that every angle has a chance to be a new opportunity.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-written, but contentwise fairly mediocre in my view, story about the stone layer Dino, who spends his simple life working (following in his father's footsteps), playing (the Italian version of) billiards, and fantasises with his wife about travelling. Intruding on this uneventful existence, events start with the wife announcing her pregnancy and then the city council changing to laying tarmac (the influence of the Mafia or other corruptive forces are strongly hinted at). Dino participates in a billiards tournament (and wins, surprise surprise), which enables him to start playing professionally and to quit the tarmac laying job. Then, one evening a former co-worker turns up. He has been planting (fairly innocuous) bombs around town and Dino decides to help him escape.

Upon returning, he discovers that his wife has had a miscarriage/given premature birth to their daughter. The wife survives at first, but dies the following day. Dino discovers that the travelling notebooks, which are supposed to document the travels the couple have been dreaming about, are in fact been fictituous records of real travels, down to the smallest details including conversations with locals etc.

They are quite common such 'celebrations of a simple life' - almost a genre of its own (think Robert Seethaler). Spare/sparse prose is a common denominator. This one is a bit darker than most, but I felt quite detached from the whole thing. Not really impressed and a bit surprised to see that his books/writing style are often compared to Hemingway (whom I haven't read much of admittedly).

[Mike Futcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid literary performance from Pietro Grossi. More style than substance, Grossi's short novel The Break is written in a taut, simple prose that makes it very quick and easy to read. The book breathes well. That said, it was hard to piece together what the point of the story was. The characters are sometimes too lightly drawn and there is a bit of pomposity to the endeavour. Grossi weights everything with metaphor and literary meaning, with everything from the confusing billiards game to road-laying and cooking eggs being analogous to some wider principle of life. Sometimes it feels as though the book isn't deep enough to take the strain.

Even so, the literary performance stays on the side of agreeableness, and the reader can dig out a message by the end: take life as it comes, because you can never gauge with precision where things will fall. Bear in mind it is the reader who has to do the digging, and this won't be satisfactory to many. The book only makes sense after you have read it (the final scene is key), which can make it a frustrating read, but the book's so short and earnest that it's not a futile one.

[Elena Mencarelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ho apprezzato molto il tipo di scrittura del romanzo: precisa, descrittiva al punto giusto e piuttosto scorrevole. La trama però è difficile da valutare, visto il numero ridotto di avvenimenti. Mi è piaciuta molto la figura del protagonista, Dino, un uomo estremamente abitudinario e che vive di poche certezze: i ciottoli, il biliardo e Sofia. Ed è davanti alla caduta di alcune di queste certezze che possiamo notare una sebbene minima evoluzione del personaggio che, calmo e taciturno, cerca di far fronte ai cambiamenti che la vita gli impone.
Non tra le mie letture preferite di sempre, ma sicuramente un buon libro.

[Mado · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve had this book on my bookshelf for more than 5 years, I think, and it surprised me when I finally started reading it. The narration is a bit mysterious, but only because the main character Dino really only cares about his small world. A bomb going off in the town hall, for example, is less remarkable than a game of billiards or his wife’s pregnant belly. So when grief strikes it hits HARD. Breathless reading this on the subway kind of hard.

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

The style is very sparse, but well-written, easily read and engaging. It’s also heartbreaking - but the message is a positive one. Embrace unpredictability, because things never turn out exactly where you expect them to.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

[I read a translation in English]
A short, perfect book with few unnecessary words or passages. For those who enjoy Hemingway and Magda Szabó's "The Door."

[Hoa (Hannah) · Rating 4 out of 5]

kinda chaotic but written in a way which is very calm

[Piedini · Rating 3 out of 5]

sette

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dino is a placid, unambitious man. Living in a small provincial town, he and his wife spend their time planning journeys to faraway places-journeys they never take. Dino's only passion is billiards, and he spends his evenings in the local billiards hall honing his technique. One day, however, Dino's quiet life is interrupted - his wife falls pregnant. This the first in a series of events that shake him from his slumber and force Dino to test himself for the first time. As in his widely praised Fists, Pietro Grossi's stripped-down prose brings out the epic human drama in a tale of everyday life.

I was delighted when I got asked to look at The Break. Billiards is all about straight lines – "The shortest route possible for the best result. Precise simple rules." – and that is what the writing is like here. It doesn’t wallow in long descriptions and chooses its words carefully. In that respect it’s very much the literary novel but it is also a novel that is very easy to read, perhaps a little too easy because the chapters just fly by if you’re not careful. But if I was looking for a single word to describe it I’d probably go with ‘subtle’: delicately complex and understated. It doesn’t do the work the reader ought to be doing, drawing parallels, making connections but it does have a point to make and it’s made at the very end of the book. This book may work on a small canvas but it deals with big issues. Amanda Hopkinson, in her review in The Independent, said that, “The Break is small and perfectly formed.” At 220 pages it’s not that small but I have to agree with her. I was certainly not disappointed by this second book in English, again translated by the clearly more than capable Howard Curtis.

You can read my full review on my blog here.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deceitfully simple story about an Italian stone paver who loves billiards meditates on some big questions.

Dino longs for the ability to travel and see the world with his wife on the one hand and to lead a simple straightforward life on the other. He mostly keeps his head and eyes down. He finds a certain peace in laying the stones that make up the roads in his town and by playing pool. He enjoys the symmetry and settled process of both.

But life simply doesn't work that way. His mentor in pool enters him into a tournament and changes the way he sees the game. The corrupt officials in his town decide to switch to tarmac and turn his job upside down.

And when one of his co-workers shows up at his house asking for help it sets off repercussion that will change his life forever. But in the end, even tragedy isn't so simple and a glimmer of hope shines in the darkest hour.

Sparse but evocative language mark this engaging translation and make reading it a joy.

[Lucinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a deceptively simple story with a most unusual subject matter.

Dino lives a quiet provincial life, with fixed routines and narrow focus. He lays cobble streets and plays billiards in the evening. He and his wife fantasize about travelling the world, but for Dino this is just another routine they have adopted. When Dino's wife becomes pregnant, his life is disrupted and a series of events changes his life forever.

Surprisingly, I loved the descriptions of the billiard games and the contrast of this precise and mathemetical aspect with the chaos of the real world, in which Dino is increasingly forced to live. There are numerous paragraphs of pure, almost poetic beauty. I found this a compelling and very moving read and have found myself thinking about it often, since I finished reading.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished The Break, by Pietro Grossi. A new author to me, I was bowled over by this book. It is short (only 220 pages), simply written and very understated in style but I absolutely loved it. I found it very moving and have given it a rare 5* (the last was To the End of The Land by David Grossman and that was about 3 years ago. I recommend both of them to you)
The story of The Break centres on Dino. He lays stone roads, as his father did before him. Then comes tarmac. Since he was a boy, Dino has been fascinated by billiards and, taken under the wing (reluctantly) of an older player he perfects his game. He and his wife have dreams of travel, of discovering the world.
The story weaves these strands together with simplicity, with an astute insight into character, and with an unexpected event or two that changes Dino's life forever.

[Procyon Lotor · Rating 3 out of 5]

buon romanzo sul nuovo che avanza e correlativa ondata di cacca (che il cambiamento sia intrinsecamente positivo, � moderna opinione diffusa solitamente da chi sul cambiamento fattura gli utili), eccessivo per� il sovraccarico di sfiga per mettere alla prova il personaggio, ben scritto ma il sovraccarico appesantisce. Anche qui c'� il rischio che la totalizzante e toscanissima passione per il biliardo, allontani chi non riesce a prefigurarsi il bar fumoso con silenti uomini intenti a geometrizzare serissime battaglie, prima di lasciare che la metafora si spieghi. colonna sonora, svariati canali radio, principalmente house.

[Karenina · Rating 2 out of 5]

ero indecisa per le due stelline, di materiale in questo libro ce ne sarebbe; il tema dell'imprevedibilità della vita si prestava e la metafora del biliardo con le sue traiettorie precise prometteva qualcosa di più; inizia scarno fino all'osso con un protagonista che ti vien voglia di scuotere talmente è ingessato, poi in poche pagine succede di tutto e troppo in fretta, tirato via con uno stile approssimativo.. peccato

[Tom Bennett · Rating 2 out of 5]

A great read, and a fine testament to translator Howard Curtis's talent.
I feel a bit muddled by the book - I liked it, I think. I say 'I think' because there are acres if beautiful prose and yet somehow I couldn't relate to the hero at all. As if he wasn't fleshed out enough as a character. And yet I'm left with the sense that this was intentional, which leaves the characters and story going round in the back of my mind.

[Warren Parkinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had this book recommended to me by a bookshop in Bath who have a very good reputation.

I have to say, I was underwhelmed by this book. I appreciated it for its simplicity, however I felt unable to develop any kind of fondness or empathy with the characters due to the shortness of the story.

If this book were a film, it would be a light Sunday afternoon drama.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a delightful find! Beautifully produced by the Pushkin Press, and a great addition to their publications. Makes a change to read an Italian author, and this book appears to have been expertly translated. A poignant and atmospheric little tale.

[Rosie Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the most beautifully written books I've ever had the privilege to read. Prose as poetry.
A simple, sparing account of a life but at the same time a page turner.
Oh to be able to write like this!
Mr Grossi - you're a genius.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read my review on New York Journal of Books.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

A contemporary masterpiece: no false moves anywhere.

[Karen Rye · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true gem of a book. This is so beautifully and simply told it is heart rending. Will find myself returning to this time and time again I feel. Truly great.

[Marc Lane]

odd little book, hard to relate to snooker scenes (a big part of the book) but excellent ending.

[Gracie · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderfully poetic with a sucker punch towards the end. Dino is a sympathetic figure, just trying to understand the world around him.

[Chiara Zucconi · Rating 3 out of 5]

buon libro.. non apprezzando il biliardo mi sono annoiata spesso e non ho compreso la metafora.. ma è un buon libro

[Rich Boulton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written account of a quiet life, a man who finds everything he needs in routine and simple pleasures, and then had to deal with changes forced upon him. Highly recommended.