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Class
The breakout novel by Francesco Pacifico, one of Italy’s most acclaimed writers, hailed by Dana Spiotta as “brilliantly funny and weirdly subversive”
Ludovica and Lorenzo live in Rome. She works in her family’s bookstore, and he’s a filmmaker—or, rather, a “filmmaker”: so far, all he’s produced is one pretentious short film that even his friends don’t take seriously. But somehow, he gets a scholarship to Columbia University, and the couple decide to head to New York—specifically, to Williamsburg: the promised land.
They soon fall in with a group of Italian expats—all of them with artistic ambitions and the family money to support those ambitions indefinitely. There’s Nicolino, the playboy; Marcello, the aspiring rapper; Sergio, the literary scout; and a handful of others. These languidly ambitious men and women will come together and fall apart, but can they escape their fates? Can anyone?
In Class, Francesco Pacifico gives a grand, subversive, formally ambitious social novel that bridges Italy and America, high and low, money and art. A novel that channels Virginia Woolf and Kanye West, Henry Miller and Lil’ Wayne, Class is an unforgettable, mordantly funny account of Italians chasing the American dream.
"Plainly the work of a forceful and ambitious writer... (Class) is like little else I’ve read in recent years.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
Ludovica and Lorenzo live in Rome. She works in her family’s bookstore, and he’s a filmmaker—or, rather, a “filmmaker”: so far, all he’s produced is one pretentious short film that even his friends don’t take seriously. But somehow, he gets a scholarship to Columbia University, and the couple decide to head to New York—specifically, to Williamsburg: the promised land.
They soon fall in with a group of Italian expats—all of them with artistic ambitions and the family money to support those ambitions indefinitely. There’s Nicolino, the playboy; Marcello, the aspiring rapper; Sergio, the literary scout; and a handful of others. These languidly ambitious men and women will come together and fall apart, but can they escape their fates? Can anyone?
In Class, Francesco Pacifico gives a grand, subversive, formally ambitious social novel that bridges Italy and America, high and low, money and art. A novel that channels Virginia Woolf and Kanye West, Henry Miller and Lil’ Wayne, Class is an unforgettable, mordantly funny account of Italians chasing the American dream.
"Plainly the work of a forceful and ambitious writer... (Class) is like little else I’ve read in recent years.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
353 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 2, 2014
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March 31, 2025
RADIOGRAFIA DEGLI ITALICI EXPATS NELLA GRANDE MELA
Devo sapere cose che m’impediscono di provare simpatia per lei, eppure devo stare con lei, e i suoi sentimenti sono i miei: è il mio dovere.
Citazione da p. 24, doverosa in quanto in una sorta di strana nota introduttiva – strana perché sono tre citazioni che anticipano l’epigrafe, che possono essere vere o finte, firmate da soggetti che potrebbero essere sia esistenti che inventati (Michail Bachtin, ok, si conosce; ma chi è Florence Mathieu, e chi è Padre Kaczmarek?) è scritto anche che:
Ciò che mi ha fatto smettere la critica dei romanzi è stato il compiersi in America di quella restaurazione letteraria che vuole ogni opera dedicata all’elevazione morale del lettore tramite il congegno sovrastrutturale dell’empatia per i personaggi. Un’empatia sempre a buon mercato che però vale come unica direzione morale della narrazione. Oggi lo scopo del romanzo americano sembra essere esclusivamente “l’accrescimento di umanità” di un “essere umano”…
Mi pare un’esplicita dichiarazione d’intenti: lasciate ogni empatia o voi che vi apprestate a leggermi, ché io, che ho scritto per voi – ma forse soprattutto per me - l’empatia l’ho fatta sparire nello scarico del cesso, dopo averla polverizzata per essere certo che appena mi distraggo non spunti fuori da qualche parte del mio racconto.
E infatti, sin dal titolo ho percepito Francesco Pacifico in posizione sopraelevata rispetto ai suoi personaggi – come se avesse capito tutto, manco fosse il padre del cristo – e fortemente giudicante.
Ora, va bene, forse l’empatia non è basilare, forse è una trappola per il lettore, forse alle emozioni diamo troppa importanza: ma anche riempire trecentodieci grandi pagine – il formato del libro è sovradimensionato – di difetti furbate bassezze meschinità malizie cattiverie eccetera, imputarle tutte a tutti i personaggi, farlo in modo dichiarato e senza la minima sottigliezza… ecco, io non ne sentivo il bisogno. Mi pare un “congegno sovrastrutturale” che non funziona. Almeno con me non funziona.
Che poi, empatia non è mica simpatia: i personaggi non devono per forza essermi simpatici. Ma devo percepire la loro umanità, alta o bassa che sia. Se sono solo teoremi, assiomi, dimostrazioni di un principio teorico, magari sociologico, tanto vale leggere un trattato di matematica.
Faccio un esempio: se l’aspirante sedicente artista filmmaker Lorenzo me lo descrivi come un pirla che si crede dotato di grande talento ma che realizza operine molto presuntuose e meno che mediocri, è chiaro che io lettore capisco subito che questo Lorenzo non andrà da nessuna parte, e che se non finisce nella squadra dei falliti è solo perché mamma e papà hanno più di un conto corrente, e tutti ben forniti. E quindi, d’accordo, abbiamo fatto fuori l’empatia: ma qui, tu, caro Francesco Pacifico, elimini anche l’attesa, la costruzione, lo sviluppo, l’iceberg di Hemingway che io prediligo, mi spiattelli tutto dalla prima pagina, mi fai capire tutto da subito: che senso ha che proceda a leggerti?
Tanto più che adotti un linguaggio tutto smaccato autocelebrativo sparato e tirato e inforcato e ingombrante e profluviante e tracimante dalla prima all’ultima parola – proprio come sto facendo io in queste mie note di lettura - e ti cimenti in citazioni di e da film, canzoni, marche, indumenti, manco fossi Bret Easton Ellis che proprio non sei…
E se aggiungiamo il fatto che le “verità” che proclami, e che credi di aver scoperto, sono state tutte già enunciate prima di questo tuo parto letterario – che ho il sospetto piaccia a te più che a me – da sociologi, poeti, romanzieri, registi, economisti e compagnia bella…
Ecco, se mettiamo insieme tutti questi aspetti, ma io che ti ho letto a fare?
Devo sapere cose che m’impediscono di provare simpatia per lei, eppure devo stare con lei, e i suoi sentimenti sono i miei: è il mio dovere.
Citazione da p. 24, doverosa in quanto in una sorta di strana nota introduttiva – strana perché sono tre citazioni che anticipano l’epigrafe, che possono essere vere o finte, firmate da soggetti che potrebbero essere sia esistenti che inventati (Michail Bachtin, ok, si conosce; ma chi è Florence Mathieu, e chi è Padre Kaczmarek?) è scritto anche che:
Ciò che mi ha fatto smettere la critica dei romanzi è stato il compiersi in America di quella restaurazione letteraria che vuole ogni opera dedicata all’elevazione morale del lettore tramite il congegno sovrastrutturale dell’empatia per i personaggi. Un’empatia sempre a buon mercato che però vale come unica direzione morale della narrazione. Oggi lo scopo del romanzo americano sembra essere esclusivamente “l’accrescimento di umanità” di un “essere umano”…
Mi pare un’esplicita dichiarazione d’intenti: lasciate ogni empatia o voi che vi apprestate a leggermi, ché io, che ho scritto per voi – ma forse soprattutto per me - l’empatia l’ho fatta sparire nello scarico del cesso, dopo averla polverizzata per essere certo che appena mi distraggo non spunti fuori da qualche parte del mio racconto.
E infatti, sin dal titolo ho percepito Francesco Pacifico in posizione sopraelevata rispetto ai suoi personaggi – come se avesse capito tutto, manco fosse il padre del cristo – e fortemente giudicante.
Ora, va bene, forse l’empatia non è basilare, forse è una trappola per il lettore, forse alle emozioni diamo troppa importanza: ma anche riempire trecentodieci grandi pagine – il formato del libro è sovradimensionato – di difetti furbate bassezze meschinità malizie cattiverie eccetera, imputarle tutte a tutti i personaggi, farlo in modo dichiarato e senza la minima sottigliezza… ecco, io non ne sentivo il bisogno. Mi pare un “congegno sovrastrutturale” che non funziona. Almeno con me non funziona.
Che poi, empatia non è mica simpatia: i personaggi non devono per forza essermi simpatici. Ma devo percepire la loro umanità, alta o bassa che sia. Se sono solo teoremi, assiomi, dimostrazioni di un principio teorico, magari sociologico, tanto vale leggere un trattato di matematica.
Faccio un esempio: se l’aspirante sedicente artista filmmaker Lorenzo me lo descrivi come un pirla che si crede dotato di grande talento ma che realizza operine molto presuntuose e meno che mediocri, è chiaro che io lettore capisco subito che questo Lorenzo non andrà da nessuna parte, e che se non finisce nella squadra dei falliti è solo perché mamma e papà hanno più di un conto corrente, e tutti ben forniti. E quindi, d’accordo, abbiamo fatto fuori l’empatia: ma qui, tu, caro Francesco Pacifico, elimini anche l’attesa, la costruzione, lo sviluppo, l’iceberg di Hemingway che io prediligo, mi spiattelli tutto dalla prima pagina, mi fai capire tutto da subito: che senso ha che proceda a leggerti?
Tanto più che adotti un linguaggio tutto smaccato autocelebrativo sparato e tirato e inforcato e ingombrante e profluviante e tracimante dalla prima all’ultima parola – proprio come sto facendo io in queste mie note di lettura - e ti cimenti in citazioni di e da film, canzoni, marche, indumenti, manco fossi Bret Easton Ellis che proprio non sei…
E se aggiungiamo il fatto che le “verità” che proclami, e che credi di aver scoperto, sono state tutte già enunciate prima di questo tuo parto letterario – che ho il sospetto piaccia a te più che a me – da sociologi, poeti, romanzieri, registi, economisti e compagnia bella…
Ecco, se mettiamo insieme tutti questi aspetti, ma io che ti ho letto a fare?
June 28, 2017
This book is so funny, and reference-dense in a way that I love, and weird. I don't think that everyone should read it, but anyone should at least give it a shot.
April 29, 2019
This was a big meh. A far-too-long sprawl about a wide range of rich Italian people gallivanting around being rich and obnoxious. It's been awhile and I don't remember much more, but it was convoluted and over-populated and full of people I didn't like a bit.
February 1, 2023
A quintessential 2.5 star novel, bumped up for a few truly marvelous passages of cultural critique.
I was enjoying this novel, albeit with a bit of difficulty tracking what seemed like a needlessly generous complement of characters. Nothing like the difficulty of reading Beckett or major-phase Gaddis (who gets a nod, which ought to have been warning enough), but it was more attention than I felt like paying to what clearly wasn't a work of Pynchonian or Wallachian (Wallace-ite?) scope or ambition. Still, I was tootling along alright, my efforts repaid with the aforementioned critical aperçus.
But then about 4/5 of the way through the book the wheels came off, and finishing it became a job of work rather than a somewhat arduous pleasure. Suddenly, narrating characters were shifting in the middle of a chapter with no indication to mark the shift. This did not produce a Brechtian alienation effect, or even the kind of blossoming sense of acceleration I associate with the best of Kundera—just a weary "oh for fuck's sake" sigh of exasperation.
It felt like Pacifico was perhaps worried that he'd been too conventional up to that point, so he decided to invoke the big medicine of unattributed narrative shift for…uh…reasons. Instant postmodernism, but in furtherance of what thematic end I could not say. Franzen, Shteyngart and DFW are all name-checked in the book; perhaps there's some anxiety of influence being worked out. I dunno, and I didn't care enough to figure it out.
I'm of a certain age; as a result, I'm a bit more judicious with my time and attention. For example, despite grad school in political theory, I still don't feel like I understand Hegel -- would time spent on this have been better spent tackling (e.g.) the Lesser Logic? Probably not…but that's because of the deficiencies of Hegel, not because of the inherent qualities of this novel.
I was enjoying this novel, albeit with a bit of difficulty tracking what seemed like a needlessly generous complement of characters. Nothing like the difficulty of reading Beckett or major-phase Gaddis (who gets a nod, which ought to have been warning enough), but it was more attention than I felt like paying to what clearly wasn't a work of Pynchonian or Wallachian (Wallace-ite?) scope or ambition. Still, I was tootling along alright, my efforts repaid with the aforementioned critical aperçus.
But then about 4/5 of the way through the book the wheels came off, and finishing it became a job of work rather than a somewhat arduous pleasure. Suddenly, narrating characters were shifting in the middle of a chapter with no indication to mark the shift. This did not produce a Brechtian alienation effect, or even the kind of blossoming sense of acceleration I associate with the best of Kundera—just a weary "oh for fuck's sake" sigh of exasperation.
It felt like Pacifico was perhaps worried that he'd been too conventional up to that point, so he decided to invoke the big medicine of unattributed narrative shift for…uh…reasons. Instant postmodernism, but in furtherance of what thematic end I could not say. Franzen, Shteyngart and DFW are all name-checked in the book; perhaps there's some anxiety of influence being worked out. I dunno, and I didn't care enough to figure it out.
I'm of a certain age; as a result, I'm a bit more judicious with my time and attention. For example, despite grad school in political theory, I still don't feel like I understand Hegel -- would time spent on this have been better spent tackling (e.g.) the Lesser Logic? Probably not…but that's because of the deficiencies of Hegel, not because of the inherent qualities of this novel.
February 13, 2018
For a book that loves to go on about other works of art being "derivative," this is just an Italian rewrite of Bright Lights, Bity City, complete with second person narration. I have to say it was incredibly frustrating to read basic errors of setting on every other page: apparently New York City has "Nordic" light (it doesn't), Williamsburg has no billboards (it does), the McGraw-Hill Building is "vivid" green (it isn't), and on and on. And Pacifico's repeated allusions to European auteurs is grating, especially with words like "Jarmuschian" used in passing and in place of real description. Not that the author is good at that either: at one point he calls a group of people in Rite-Aid "Asian ugly."
February 2, 2018
Some of these reviews are starting to make this page look like a Netflix review board. Oh you didn't enjoy it? You've never been to Italy. You're an American. You didn't read enough to get the references. There are no prerequisites to reading this. What stuns me is that a book so dedicated to pleasure could elicit so little of my own. I'm not even sure Pacifico succeeds in his goal of leaving the "humanizing increment" of American novels. I just feel as though this was an effort to humanize pigs. Worse, in a climate where capitalism suggests you should enjoy yourself, it's hard to trust a work entitled "Class" narrated by a Marxist who suggests Americans should enjoy life more who is also in love with fascists. Because the end result makes you relieved to be a bourgeois. And I do not think a book should do that. Even one as unserious as this.
June 3, 2022
Noi non raccontiamo grandissime storie, la nostra è una forma di tragedia che è tutta nel dettaglio.
December 31, 2017
Not a five star but not a one star either. You do need some familiarity with Italy for this, and I am lucky, I get both worlds, dear One Star Giver.
American life is Gotha for some Italian people, in an irrational, hedonistic way. Very 90s. Everything available anytime. The book shows wasted, useless, not-so-young people squirm when they realize that the American dream is a thin veil covering uneasiness, dirt, monotony and shallow randomness. They see that anything meaningful takes effort and that youth cures everything but it doesn't last.
Were I American, I’d be intrigued to discover what goes on amongst those souls pushing hard to “get into” a coveted world. It might give me a different view of the world I live in, were I American. It might show me, as an American person, how threadbare my world is.
That said... I feel your pain, One Star Giver. I read this book in Italian and I cannot think of a harder job than rendering it into English. The mood is in the words, some expressions carry more meaning than a long sentence thanks to aeons of shared culture… Only some sentences, though. Hence the three stars.
American life is Gotha for some Italian people, in an irrational, hedonistic way. Very 90s. Everything available anytime. The book shows wasted, useless, not-so-young people squirm when they realize that the American dream is a thin veil covering uneasiness, dirt, monotony and shallow randomness. They see that anything meaningful takes effort and that youth cures everything but it doesn't last.
Were I American, I’d be intrigued to discover what goes on amongst those souls pushing hard to “get into” a coveted world. It might give me a different view of the world I live in, were I American. It might show me, as an American person, how threadbare my world is.
That said... I feel your pain, One Star Giver. I read this book in Italian and I cannot think of a harder job than rendering it into English. The mood is in the words, some expressions carry more meaning than a long sentence thanks to aeons of shared culture… Only some sentences, though. Hence the three stars.
December 30, 2017
One of the most frustrating, obtuse and confusing books I've read in a very long time. I'm not sure if the fault lies with the author or in its translation from the Italian, but it's positively unintelligible. The entire book is told in the first person but from the perspective of many different characters who change without warning. Add to this switching back and forth from past to present, changing locations, multiple Italian nicknames and dimutives for each character, and both Roman and Milanese slang and you're left with a positive hash! The only thing clear is the authors utter disdain for the Italian bourgeoisie.
March 19, 2019
Abbandonato per manifesta impossibilità al proseguimento.
Del resto mi domando cosa mi porti anche solo lontanamente a imbarcarmi in certe letture.
Cliché, dialoghi vivificati da consecutio traballanti e la sensazione che bastasse anche solo una canzone de I Cani e non 300 pagine o giù di lì per descrivere la condizione del romano expat trafitto dallo spleen e dall' ideale.
Del resto mi domando cosa mi porti anche solo lontanamente a imbarcarmi in certe letture.
Cliché, dialoghi vivificati da consecutio traballanti e la sensazione che bastasse anche solo una canzone de I Cani e non 300 pagine o giù di lì per descrivere la condizione del romano expat trafitto dallo spleen e dall' ideale.
November 13, 2014
se avessi voluto leggere vice, avrei letto vice
December 16, 2014
Fastidioso quanto il mondo che vuole descrivere. Dunque riuscito.
July 18, 2017
Possibly the worst book I've ever read. So bad that I threw it away so that no one else would suffer.
August 28, 2017
very entertaining in the beginning but it gets wearing halfway through and a struggle to finish it
September 7, 2017
Vile characters, incoherent plot, truly unpleasant. Maybe you have to be Italian to follow whatever the author is getting at. Not recommended.
May 22, 2021
Illeggibile, finisco qui dopo 60 pagine e le gonadi irrimediabilmente fracassate
November 2, 2020
What everyone else says about an unsatisfactory ending is true, so if you’re looking for clear resolve and redemption for extremely unlikable characters; this ain’t that book.
Pacifico seems to be attempting something subversive with Italian slang - which seems to be inexplicably tied with how much money your parents make - but a lot of the details of these linguistic tags are lost on the English reader as we hear the characters refer to Brooklyn in the silliest possible ways. Williamsburg is "Willy" and we get out of touch descriptions such as: “You rented a large room in a rickety apartment whose molted hardwood floors slanted from north to south - No New York apartment had perfectly straight floors, you'd heard. There were large windows that let in, pale Nordic light and a rotten front door with three locks."
This intentionally out-of-touch-with-reality language blends with the RELENTLESS descriptions of shit these people consume or dream about consuming and forms something the kids today would call “Cringe AF.” Quite frankly, I had a lot of fun observing this cringy behavior here. These bougie a-holes were so obsessed with Vice, Wes Anderson, and chasing the American pop culture machine that they offered up a perfect, globalized perspective to the influence of American consumerism. I think anyone who has spent any amount of time outside of the United States (Particularly in Asia) will speak to the ubiquitous nature of Supreme T-shirts, Nike Air MAX, and NYU alumni pseudo-intellectuals.
Is the ending incoherent? Yes. Are the characters extremely unlikeable? Absolutely. I think the only way that Class really shines, is as a critique that goes beyond New York and Upper Middle-class Italians and speaks to the way that that modern consumer culture is changing the global bourgeoisie and It does it often with strikingly beautiful prose.
Pacifico seems to be attempting something subversive with Italian slang - which seems to be inexplicably tied with how much money your parents make - but a lot of the details of these linguistic tags are lost on the English reader as we hear the characters refer to Brooklyn in the silliest possible ways. Williamsburg is "Willy" and we get out of touch descriptions such as: “You rented a large room in a rickety apartment whose molted hardwood floors slanted from north to south - No New York apartment had perfectly straight floors, you'd heard. There were large windows that let in, pale Nordic light and a rotten front door with three locks."
This intentionally out-of-touch-with-reality language blends with the RELENTLESS descriptions of shit these people consume or dream about consuming and forms something the kids today would call “Cringe AF.” Quite frankly, I had a lot of fun observing this cringy behavior here. These bougie a-holes were so obsessed with Vice, Wes Anderson, and chasing the American pop culture machine that they offered up a perfect, globalized perspective to the influence of American consumerism. I think anyone who has spent any amount of time outside of the United States (Particularly in Asia) will speak to the ubiquitous nature of Supreme T-shirts, Nike Air MAX, and NYU alumni pseudo-intellectuals.
Is the ending incoherent? Yes. Are the characters extremely unlikeable? Absolutely. I think the only way that Class really shines, is as a critique that goes beyond New York and Upper Middle-class Italians and speaks to the way that that modern consumer culture is changing the global bourgeoisie and It does it often with strikingly beautiful prose.
August 18, 2018
Just because you may be born into a certain class doesn't mean you actually have any class at all. Don't get the two confused. Class by Francesco Pacifico doesn't, but it doesn't make it any better of a reading experience for it. Translated from the original Italian, there is an editor's note stating that it was majorly re-edited and slightly rearranged in the process. Maybe something was lost in translation. Maybe not. This book comments on that as well, trying to translate Italian phrases, sometimes slang, and coming to the conclusion that there is no appropriate English transliteration. Fair enough. Yet I don't think the translation is to blame. What kind of book is Class? It's a book that uses third-person voice as second-person narration, only to skip around perspective and voice. This second/third person narrator is Daria, who is dead, recalling a prank she helped perform on Ludovica and Lorenzo, privileged thirtysomething Italians living in Williamsburg (for which they call Willy). But when the prank is revealed it comes off nothing more as a shrugged beside the point, because it is beside the point. This narration device is a means to talk about Italian class privilege, because Daria has intimate knowledge into the lives of Ludovica, Lorenzo, their struggling marriage, as well as and many of the connected characters that also suffer from a lot of the same ills. Class is about the pretensions of the characters that don't realize that they're pretentious. It is also an anti-empathetic treatise about the use of empathy in American novels, using its high-wire literary device to do it. Does it work? Not for me. Class lacks a certain amount of class, which may be the point all along.
May 13, 2021
Al netto di tutto, “Class”, uscito nel 2014 - in contemporanea con “Nel mondo a venire”, guarda un po’ - è pure invecchiato benino. C’è da dire che all’altezza dell’AD 2021 la dialettica delle filter bubble si è sclerotizzata, tanto che si sono acuite sensazioni di distacco tra, ad esempio, Milano e Roma, provincia e città, nord sud, in una continua polarità con i margini sempre più spessi, e quella retorica tra “centro-periferia”, “provincia e impero” su cui molto del romanzo faceva perno, è oggi difficilmente riconoscibile: io che vivo a 2 ore di auto da Roma, percepisco i romani di oggi - per come si atteggiano - come i newyorchesi del 2011 e la Capitale con una vibe ché parafrasando il James Murphy quello vero, «Roma I love you but you’re bringing me down, per davvero».
"Class" è molto meno fastidioso, molto meno controverso, se lo si considera come un romanzo goncourtiano, l’implacabilità della miseria si abbatte su questi personaggi che sono alchimie sperimentali - voglio dire, “Class” è un romanzo sperimentale, ma proprio nel senso di Zola e Taine. Se consideriamo la Sposina, Gustavo Tullio, Nicola Berengo, Sergino, come esperimenti puri, questi divengono estremamente più digeribili. L’espediente della voce intradiegetica, l’embrayage del personaggio di Daria, che va poi sfarfallando nella parte finale, non è che un rafforzativo di questo distacco. Se i personaggi fossero più empatici, meno recalcitranti, l’espediente narratologico attuato da Francesco Pacifico sarebbe stato esercizio puro, e invece è meraviglioso e soddisfacente vedere questi personaggi crollare, percepirli nella loro graduale liquefazione, la classe disagiata con la rooftop credibility che lentamente muore, nell’ultimo decennio prima del Covid.
"Class" è molto meno fastidioso, molto meno controverso, se lo si considera come un romanzo goncourtiano, l’implacabilità della miseria si abbatte su questi personaggi che sono alchimie sperimentali - voglio dire, “Class” è un romanzo sperimentale, ma proprio nel senso di Zola e Taine. Se consideriamo la Sposina, Gustavo Tullio, Nicola Berengo, Sergino, come esperimenti puri, questi divengono estremamente più digeribili. L’espediente della voce intradiegetica, l’embrayage del personaggio di Daria, che va poi sfarfallando nella parte finale, non è che un rafforzativo di questo distacco. Se i personaggi fossero più empatici, meno recalcitranti, l’espediente narratologico attuato da Francesco Pacifico sarebbe stato esercizio puro, e invece è meraviglioso e soddisfacente vedere questi personaggi crollare, percepirli nella loro graduale liquefazione, la classe disagiata con la rooftop credibility che lentamente muore, nell’ultimo decennio prima del Covid.
February 6, 2018
Class? More like Crass. Admittedly, we're not talking about class in terms of decorum here but it's certainly a bunch of assholes who populate these pages. This is the kind of novel that makes you appreciate the writing but hate the pretentiousness involved. Another fitting title could have been Assholes d'Italia because that's a near-perfect summary of what the plot revolves around. You have a handful of people who are completely without empathy for others (and the reader has no empathy for them in return) who are solely obsessed with consumption of all kinds. However, it's a "train wreck book" ... it's not necessarily quality, but it's so strange and these people are so beyond the pale that you just can't stop yourself from finishing it.
Here's a nugget of the quality prose found within: “You’re mine. I’ll choke you, and I’ll drown you. I’m Niagara Falls.”
Bellissimo, huh?!
Here's a nugget of the quality prose found within: “You’re mine. I’ll choke you, and I’ll drown you. I’m Niagara Falls.”
Bellissimo, huh?!
Read
July 17, 2021I don't like assigning stars to books that I don't finish- stopped at about 60% read. I have a feeling that people connected with priviledged young adult Italians, and particularly those who spent time living in the States, would find many of the characters entertaining and fun. For me, just didn't feel connected to any of the situations or relationships.
Each chapter seemed to speak from a different character's point of view, and it took a bit of time to figure out which character was speaking. And then trying to figure out who that character was and how he or she was related to the other characters. And then trying to care about what was happening.
Just not for me.
Each chapter seemed to speak from a different character's point of view, and it took a bit of time to figure out which character was speaking. And then trying to figure out who that character was and how he or she was related to the other characters. And then trying to care about what was happening.
Just not for me.
May 16, 2025
Honestly, I have no idea what I just read! Constant changes of tense and narrators, sometimes mid-sentence - I'm thoroughly confused. Nothing happened and I don't care about any of the characters - too many to really keep track of our differentiate one from another - they just ask blend into nobody. Not sure if it's a bad translation or just a bad novel. Or maybe I just don't get it.
May 3, 2020
As pretentious as the characters it so contemptuousy depicts. It’s 300+ pages of exhausting descriptions, which just appeared to me as a lame showing off of the author’s urban cultural capital. A total bore, despite the sex and unusual narrator perspectives.
August 6, 2018
The constant changes in point of view kept distracting me. Good characterizations. Ending petered out...
December 6, 2018
What did I just read & why did I read it
January 25, 2022
The discreet harm of the bourgeoisie.
July 18, 2023
Se devi leggere un solo libro quest'anno fa che sia questo.
January 15, 2018
"What was once open-mindedness became pure exoticism: culture was for collecting."
"A middle-aged woman: 'I'm looking for a book that's like The Name of the Rose? Could you suggest something similar? It's my favorite book!' 'Ma'am, if there were other books as good as The Name of the Rose, you'd know about them already, and their authors would be super famous and super popular.'"
"A middle-aged woman: 'I'm looking for a book that's like The Name of the Rose? Could you suggest something similar? It's my favorite book!' 'Ma'am, if there were other books as good as The Name of the Rose, you'd know about them already, and their authors would be super famous and super popular.'"
January 5, 2015
Questo libro è pretenzioso ed indigesto. Mah.
July 31, 2015
Buon libro scritto con uno stile originale che accalappia il lettore. La storia è tristemente all'ordine del giorno.
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