Federico De Caroli
Il futuro è finito

I got this book several years after reading various reviews about it. I read it slowly and with concentration, if for no other reason than the 500 plus pages and the fact that the plot is certainly not a light one. I knew the author for his musical works, and I had even listened to the album connected to the novel, though I can't remember if it was released just before or just after. I can say that the music perfectly matches the atmosphere of the story, as well as the images on the cover. But the real surprise, even though hinted at by a critic who wrote "nothing like this has ever been written before," was the sense of total immersion in the narrative events. This novel is like a slow vortex that you enter without fear, and you let yourself be carried along until you realize that you have been sucked in and inside the vortex there are a lot of events and characters that describing as enigmatic is an understatement. And even before reaching the final chapter which overturns and sweeps away this dynamic of the vortex once more, already halfway through the story, you realize that you cannot not move forward and that what happens to the protagonist, what the protagonist feels and sees, you are feeling and seeing too. That all the enigmas, premonitions, bizarre paradoxes he experiences become something that works within your mind as a reader.

"Il futuro è finito" is not a novel for everyone, in my opinion. You need to have a certain literary background. It's not a matter of culture or sophistication, but I think it's a challenge that requires a lot of attention and love for a sophisticated language. It is not that simple, linear, approachable narrative that is fashionable today and flattens any story because publishers and editors are only thinking about the market and the mass audience. Moreover, this story being transversal to genres (with elements of dystopia, thriller, fantastical-dreamlike, mystery, psychological) could not have been told with a limited Italian vocabulary and minimal syntax. Absolutely not. Its beauty also lies in the personal style of the narration; which may or may not be pleasing, but it is functional to the story itself.

I have heard of people who have read it three or four times to grasp all the interlocks and clues scattered throughout the story, each time reading it with a renewed, different approach. I finished it a few days ago and I am so fascinated by it that I dream at night about some passages as if I had lived them in person. Maybe in some time, I will start again from the beginning. It is undoubtedly a story that I will never be able to forget.