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Rating: Intrigued by the suggested affinities with Miller's Opus Pistorum, I got my hands on this little local novel that from the cover seems more like a glossy erotic melodrama... if it weren’t for that green cucumber appearing down there. Cucumber which then — in the sixth chapter — becomes the protagonist of one of the many sequences on the edge of pornography that this story offers.
Yes. Because here eroticism truly overlaps with the most explicit pornography, though supported and somehow ennobled by a witty and cultured writing style and by a series of characters and situations that indeed somewhat resemble Alf from Opus Pistorum. Modernized and set in the digital era, yet still idle and bohemian, daily worried by his pyrotechnic relationships with women at the expense of the precariousness of his existence.
Ultimately a tasty read, sometimes humorous, light-hearted even when it goes heavy-handed in describing minutely (and brazenly) sex scenes. Rede Rocca writes well, especially evident in the dialogues; but also in certain sudden poetic glimpses that describe late summer skies and atmospheres. Therefore, pseudo-porn with an underlying novelistic tone that makes the over two hundred pages very enjoyable.
The story is narrated in the first person and in the present, like a real-time chronicle of a handful of intensely packed days that summarize the existential framework of the protagonist: accommodating friends always in heat, adventurous evenings on the coast, hangover awakenings alternating with picturesque neighborhood scenes. Obviously, without any pretensions of content. Even less pretentious morally or philosophically, if only because the characters live their lives putting their instincts at stake. And many details that for a moment seem to open new narrative references, then remain suggested to leave space mostly for sensational romps.
Interesting perhaps for the reader to draw conclusions about the zeitgeist; that in light of a sexuality increasingly tied to technology and exacerbated by the web and smartphones, here remains pleasurable and tangible as in the Millerian novels, indeed. Or as in the erotic tales of past centuries. There's little technology, virtually none. Computers and phones appear just for their basic functions, but for the rest, it’s real and pure carnality.
Thinking that today erotic literature is represented by stuff like Fifty Shades of Grey, a book like "Voce del Verbo Venire" is most welcome. Pure entertainment based on a libertinism that today seems to have been lost.
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