Bruce Robinson
Le Singolari Memorie Di Thomas Penman

Here's how it happens: I have to go on vacation for a few days, maybe a week, and since I never go on vacation (those were perhaps the last or second-to-last, I don't remember) before taking the train, I enter a shopping mall to buy beach stuff, which I don't have. I also enter a kind of bookstore there, in the mall, and decide to pick up some books. One I remember was by Munro (hard to go wrong with that woman), then one I don't recall now, and then this one, of which I knew nothing about the book or the author. But the title is beautiful, the cover is beautiful, the readable font is beautiful, so I take it. I read it, I like it, I look for other books by the author, only to discover that he is mostly a director, actor, and screenwriter and at least in Italy, since then (it was 2000, I think) has never appeared again in bookstores.

And then... there's this sort of girlfriend of my brother, who starts coming over to see us even by herself, without my brother, I mean, she's young, a bit quirky. She writes, she says, she even lets me read it, you know when they ask for your opinion and you wish you were on the other side of the world, invisible and without a phone, and one of the moves that seems appropriate to sidestep the issue is to put a few books, good stuff, in a bag for her, which should help the question: "but is it really necessary for me to start writing too?" to present itself and therefore impose its fundamental dissuasive function. But I don't make a list, I don't note down the books that end up in the bag. You already understand where we're heading. She's strange, my brother is worse, thank God their relationship, with its explosive psychotic effects, finds a way to end, and young Chiara (that's her ominous and oxymoronic name) disappears, after brief visitations during which my exquisite sensitivity (the poor girl was so shaken, so tormented by the painful separation!) blinds me to the point of preventing me from asking the simple question: yes, but what about my books? Some I remember perfectly, and thanks to maneuvers involving my reluctant brother, they come home again. Then time passes, repasses, and passes away. And I remember that book by Bruce Robinson, I wonder where it ended up...? And like a nightmare in black and white from a fabulous American movie from the '40s, a close-up shot appears of my hand placing the book in the bag, the face of the child on the cover almost seems to realize the definitive nature of that gesture, maybe even the audio, with my words like: it's not a great novel, but I'm attached, I'd like to know your op...

That's why I can't tell you much more about "The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman".

I would have liked to reread it before writing these lines, I probably would have found details, elements, perspectives that didn't emerge during the first reading, veiled in memory by a tenderness that probably obscures its "flaws," the certain gaps or weaknesses. You could say I could have bought it again. Sure, even though the edition I'm talking about is no longer available, and today it's hard to even find the paperback at € 7.23 reissued in 2002 by Feltrinelli. But I didn't do it, and I won't. I want my book back, that book of mine. I've decided: one of these days, after many years, Chiara (who will be less young but I fear no less quirky) will have a surprise when she leaves her house, wherever that house may be where she now lives.

And you, you'll ask me? You should know that if you find it, this book, you'll find the story of a little boy in the English countryside of the '50s, a 13-year-old who poops around (poops quite a lot, by the way), who lives with his suffocating family, who can barely stand school, who finds an unlikely connection with a pornographer grandfather and other things I don't remember, all things that make it a so-called "coming-of-age novel." For me, a beautiful novel, written by a guy who knows how to do it and who uses the experience derived from screenwriting without overdoing it. It’s more of a novel than dozens of "novels" dreaming of seeing themselves in the cinema and mortifying the writing.

And then, if you find it at that price and if you really hate it (to stay on theme) I'll buy it back from you.

Happy Reading.

BREAKING NEWS: okay, it’s true, I really haven't told you much about the book. But I've just found you a broad preview, so you can read a few pages and then decide for yourself. CiaU.