Spit Three Times
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- $32.99
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- $32.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Carlo Boscarato Prize 2016
Winner of the Lo Straniero Prize 2016
Winner of the Attilio Micheluzzi Prize for Best Writing 2017
Sélection Officielle Angoulême 2018
In a forsaken corner of the Italian countryside, Guido and his friends Moreno and Katango spin out their days in languor and boredom intermixed with desire and, occasionally, violence. Nearby live the Stančič, a family of Romani who escaped the communist regime of Marshal Tito and settled here just after World War II. Guido’s coming-of-age is changed by the evolving relationship that the rural town has with this group of outsiders, these “gypsies.” The author is unsparing in his depiction of the townspeople’s cruelty. And yet, there are also many instances of solidarity between Guido’s community and the Stančič. Reviati’s first book in English, Spit Three Times is an extraordinary story of young men, disillusioned and trying to find their way, caught in the breach between post-war exuberance and the stagnation of the early twenty-first century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Haunting and dreamlike, Reviati's tome threads together the coming-of-age story of Guido, a teenage slacker who struggles to express himself, and the saga of the Stan i s, a Roma family living on the margins of their small Italian town. Guido and his thuggish friends taunt ferocious, unkempt Loretta Stan i . When Guido's friend stumbles upon a battered Loretta in the woods and finds a newborn baby under her skirt, he cuts the umbilical cord and saves the infant's life, only to be run off by Loretta's suspicious brothers. The thread picks up years later, when Guido hears that Loretta had three children, all lost to social services. One of the Stan i brothers interrupts Loretta and Guido's vignettes to give a primer on the treatment of the Roma during the Holocaust: at least 500,000 killed, many more sterilized as the subject of eugenic "studies." Throughout, Reviati probes the intersection of history and memory, composing in fragments that double back on themselves. Reviati's pen-and-ink lines are confident: shadows heavy, faces half blank but elegantly realized. Though searching for a plot through line is difficult at times, it's hard to discern whether that's due to translation, murky storytelling, or poetic intention. Nevertheless, those willing to slip into the town's mysteries will be rewarded by Reviati's stylish, brooding art, which captures the ache of losses small and large.
