248 pages
Published July 27, 2019 by Einaudi.
Marianne e Connell si parlano di tutto ma solo all'insaputa di tutti, si frugano i corpi e i sentimenti ma solo di nascosto, come pianeti dalle orbite imprevedibili si girano intorno, fra moti armonici e strazianti collisioni. Cosa impedisce a due ragazzi dei nostri giorni disinvolti di stare insieme in libertà e leggerezza? Gli squilibri di classe e potere? Le «stelle contrarie»? O solo l'orrore, e l'attrazione, della normalità? Nell'abbraccio in cui si stringono, però, «il suo corpo sposa quello di lei come quei materassi che pare facciano bene alla salute». E in quel quieto, benefico sostenersi sembra tacere ogni domanda. Dopo l'esplosivo debutto di Parlarne tra amici, Sally Rooney ci offre un nuovo, emozionante manuale sentimentale per la nostra modernità.
«Il suo primo romanzo è stato universalmente e meritatamente acclamato. Era difficile credere che potesse mai scrivere qualcosa di meglio. Invece è successo». «The Guardian»
Marianne e Connell si parlano di tutto ma solo all'insaputa di tutti, si frugano i corpi e i sentimenti ma solo di nascosto, come pianeti dalle orbite imprevedibili si girano intorno, fra moti armonici e strazianti collisioni. Cosa impedisce a due ragazzi dei nostri giorni disinvolti di stare insieme in libertà e leggerezza? Gli squilibri di classe e potere? Le «stelle contrarie»? O solo l'orrore, e l'attrazione, della normalità? Nell'abbraccio in cui si stringono, però, «il suo corpo sposa quello di lei come quei materassi che pare facciano bene alla salute». E in quel quieto, benefico sostenersi sembra tacere ogni domanda. Dopo l'esplosivo debutto di Parlarne tra amici, Sally Rooney ci offre un nuovo, emozionante manuale sentimentale per la nostra modernità.
«Il suo primo romanzo è stato universalmente e meritatamente acclamato. Era difficile credere che potesse mai scrivere qualcosa di meglio. Invece è successo». «The Guardian»
This is very much out of the range of books I usually read, but I really enjoyed it. I might not be the best judge of the book's qualitative standing in its genre, though.
This is very much out of the range of books I usually read, but I really enjoyed it. I might not be the best judge of the book's qualitative standing in its genre, though.
This book came out not long after Conversations with Friends but it seemed to have a quite different structure, concentrating on the two main characters, Marianne and Connell. At the beginning they are in their secondary school days and first come together, they leave their small town to go to Dublin to attend the same college where they drift apart a few times, achieve their successes, get into trouble, and by the end come to a new understanding of their situation. Like the earlier book and the book Beautiful World, Where Are You? a few years later, this book wove in ideas about economics and politics to make one think about how these affected the ways the characters behave. But I think it was more psychological considerations such as childhood trauma, depression, and a will to self-harm that played even greater roles in shaping them. The other characters appearing, the …
This book came out not long after Conversations with Friends but it seemed to have a quite different structure, concentrating on the two main characters, Marianne and Connell. At the beginning they are in their secondary school days and first come together, they leave their small town to go to Dublin to attend the same college where they drift apart a few times, achieve their successes, get into trouble, and by the end come to a new understanding of their situation. Like the earlier book and the book Beautiful World, Where Are You? a few years later, this book wove in ideas about economics and politics to make one think about how these affected the ways the characters behave. But I think it was more psychological considerations such as childhood trauma, depression, and a will to self-harm that played even greater roles in shaping them. The other characters appearing, the families of the two and their various circles of friends and lovers, all receive lesser degrees of characterization, much of it through dialogue. In some ways the book felt like a less ambitious bit of storytelling than the other two with fewer important things to be keeping track of. The author is still interested in how one gets to know a person, whether it's someone else or one's own self, and digs in to the frustration caused by getting the wrong idea of a person's nature, which is easy to believe here with young people just entering adulthood. There is an imbalance of wealth between Marianne and the working-class Connell similar to what Beautiful World, Where Are You? depicted between Alice and Felix, but those were older characters already out in the world making the issue seem even more substantial. The author is also big on depicting awkwardness her characters feel in general, and I think money and its lack is just one of various ways to achieve that effect in this book.
By the end, one of the main characters is about to launch on a literary career. The talent and work it took to get this far was touched on over the course of the story in a rather understated way, I thought, so I was a little surprised when this is what it led to. I was expecting there were going to be more setbacks and more effort to get to this, and wondered whether it was a conscious choice the author made to keep that from becoming a big focus separate from the relationship plotline. This made me think of the book as being closer to romance than a story about how these two start to approach success in life. The second character has been having unresolved ideas of what to pursue in life which aren't resolved by the end. All of this makes me think that I should rate it one step below what I gave to Conversations with Friends, but not because of the quality of the prose. I know that other readers have expressed some disappointment with this book in comparison to the other, but this isn't my feeling. I consumed this as an ebook, not in audiobook form as in the case of the other two novels, and I wouldn't be surprised if that affected the way that it hit me.
Recovery period starts now. What painful beautiful novel
Sin duda no era un libro para mí. No sé cómo llamó mi atención y me llevó a leerlo, pero no me ha gustado nada, ni el estilo de escritura, que no aporta nada por quitar guiones sino que dificulta la lectura y la llena de incisos, sin ningún porqué. Personajes planos, incompetentes emocionalmente, que no atraen en nada, con los que me ha resultado imposible empatizar, que intercalan reflexiones semiprofundas que no encajan para nada con ellos. Una trama inverosímil que no aporta nada.
Lo más profundo que he sacado es esto que resume mis sensaciones con la novela: "Nada de lo que Connell había hecho en ellas parecía haber dejado huella en él. Todo aquel viaje transcurría como una serie de cortometrajes, proyectados una única vez, y al terminar tenía la sensación de saber de lo que iban, pero ningún recuerdo preciso del argumento. Recuerda ver cosas …
Sin duda no era un libro para mí. No sé cómo llamó mi atención y me llevó a leerlo, pero no me ha gustado nada, ni el estilo de escritura, que no aporta nada por quitar guiones sino que dificulta la lectura y la llena de incisos, sin ningún porqué. Personajes planos, incompetentes emocionalmente, que no atraen en nada, con los que me ha resultado imposible empatizar, que intercalan reflexiones semiprofundas que no encajan para nada con ellos. Una trama inverosímil que no aporta nada.
Lo más profundo que he sacado es esto que resume mis sensaciones con la novela: "Nada de lo que Connell había hecho en ellas parecía haber dejado huella en él. Todo aquel viaje transcurría como una serie de cortometrajes, proyectados una única vez, y al terminar tenía la sensación de saber de lo que iban, pero ningún recuerdo preciso del argumento. Recuerda ver cosas por las ventanillas de los taxis."
Pues igual, espero olvidar pronto esta lectura.
