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Rating:
Sometimes, you come across a book published by small or tiny publishing houses that would fit well in the catalog of major publishers. In my humble opinion, this is the case with this latest novel by Luca Raimondi, published by Edizioni Il Foglio di Piombino.
Raimondi is a 36-year-old from Syracuse who, as Wikipedia attests, has already published several titles not only of fiction but also of essays, mostly on Pier Paolo Pasolini. With Pasolini, I can't say how much this coming-of-age novel of an eighteen-year-old discovering the harsh realities of University, friendship, and love in 1990s Catania has to do, probably little or nothing. Certainly, the humor, which often borders on the most hilarious comedy, did not belong to the poet and filmmaker so loved and studied by Raimondi. The environment of these young people is middle-class, nothing to do with the Roman underclass... in short, Raimondi seems not to have been influenced by his studies, but rather has found a tone and a story that are entirely original, probably very autobiographical (he was also a university student in that same city and at that same time), even if the protagonist is named Carlo Piras and his story is told in the third person, that is, in an objective manner.
The story is very simple and straightforward, although the author often takes us straight into the protagonist's mind, recounting some memories and even some long, elaborate, and extremely funny nocturnal dreams in which the protagonist reprocesses and reshuffles the day's events. Events that see him shuttled from a useless and boring lesson to incredible encounters with girls (he even tries it on with his little cousin) that inevitably lead to fierce disappointments. And then friendships that always seem on the brink of decline and, in some cases, end in the worst possible ways. A miniature apocalypse seems to hit Carlo's first university year, culminating in the finale I won't reveal but still leaves the reader satisfied, despite no sensational plot twists. But the appearance of the father (until that point in the background) and the brief dialogue he has with his son in the chapter preceding the epilogue make for a poignant scene in its simplicity, attempting, for a moment, to connect two different (but perhaps not too much) generations.
This novel has all the potential to appeal to younger readers, to become a small "cult book", but it is certainly penalized by the fact that its publisher is not Mondadori or Feltrinelli.
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