The Vertiginous Edge of Things
“There is the coming-of-age story, the education to love and violence, and the passion for ideas and words.”
la Repubblica
The Vertiginous Edge of Things can be read in many ways: a coming of age novel, an initiation into life and violence, a tale about the passion for ideas and words, a love story, a relentless reflection on the fleeting nature of success and failure. But all these readings lead back to a single point, a sort of geometric locus in the soul where sweetness and brutality, desire and fear, loss and the unexpected opportunity to start over, all come together.
A coffee bar, a crime story in the newspaper, a name resurfacing from the past. Enrico Vallesi is a man betrayed by the success of his first novel, trapped in a paradoxical fate, which has the bitter taste of missed opportunities. But the day comes when he can no longer elude his memory. So Enrico decides to get on a train and go back to the city, in the South of Italy, where he grew up, from which he escaped many years ago. Thus he begins a compelling journey of rediscovery through the memories of a troubled adolescence, wavering between anger and tenderness. It’s a fragile time, moving and violent, marked by his love for Celeste, the young and brilliant philosophy teacher, and his dangerous attraction to Salvatore, a classmate who is already an adult and experienced in life – even its most ferocious aspects.
With a smooth, sharp prose and a pace that won’t let you go, Gianrico Carofiglio guides us between the stories and the characters’ psychology, investigating the cracks of existence and evoking the banality of everyday life, “the sense of alienation that takes hold of us when we travel to distant and unknown lands”.
“The water in front of the pier was – and still is – dark and deep. That it was dark and murky was obvious; that it was deep you knew because those kids who would dive off it always came back up to the surface after each plunge.
“You didn’t know how to swim, then. You watched those demons lean over on the edge of the pier, then let themselves drop and disappear into the shouts and splashes of the turbid, menacing water, and you thought you’d never been able to do something like that.”
Publication date: 21.10.2013
Publisher: Rizzoli
Number of Pages: 315
Country: Italy
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