The House on Via Gemito
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- USD 12.99
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- USD 12.99
Descripción editorial
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
The Washington Post・Kirkus Reviews
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE
This extraordinary Strega Prize-winning novel confirms Domenico Starnone’s reputation as one of Italy’s greatest living writers. Told against the backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, a city that itself becomes a vivid character in this lush, atmospheric novel, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of Italian fiction, one that is steeped in Neapolitan lore.
A modest apartment in Via Gemito smelling of paint and turpentine. Its furniture pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio. Drying canvases moved from bed to floor each night. Federí, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced that he possesses great artistic promise. If it weren’t for the family he must feed and the jealousy of his fellow Neapolitan artists, nothing would stop him from becoming a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but also arrogant and resentful, Federí is scarred by constant disappointment. He is a larger-than-life character, a liar, a fabulist, and his fantasies shape the lives of those around him, especially his young son, Mimi, short for Domenico, who will spend a lifetime trying to get out from under his father’s shadow.
Starnone, a finalist for the National Book Award with Trick, author of New York Times notable book of the year, Ties, and the critically acclaimed Trust, takes readers beyond the slim, novella-length works for which he is known by American readers to create a vast fresco of family, fatherhood, and modern Naples.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Starnone (Trust) draws on his personal history in this nuanced saga of life as the child of an artist, originally published more than 20 years ago and now appearing in English for the first time. At the center are prickly memories of narrator Mimí's high-spirited, contentious father, Federi, as Mimí grows up in postwar Naples, seeking love and attention. Federi, a passionate and frustrated painter, supports the family as a railway worker while awaiting his big break. He contends with rivalries among fellow members of the insular art community, especially during competition in the Salon des Refuse. Mimí takes on the role of his father's model, pouring water from a demijohn and enduring an "uncomfortable pose" for what Federi believes will be his masterpiece, The Drinkers—a work "better than Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe," according to Federi. Later, a dancer, the uncle of a girl Mimí has a crush on, upends the family's dynamics after Federi insults him with homophobic slurs, prompting Mimí to question his father's worldview. Vividly portrayed secondary characters—mothers, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors—lend additional gravitas. Starnone's richly examined narrative makes for an enduring coming-of-age.
