Me And You
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Lorenzo Cuni is a fourteen-year-old loner. His wealthy parents think he is away on a school skiing trip, but, in fact, he has stowed himself away in a rarely visited cellar of his parents’ house. Surrounded by video games and tinned food, he is perfectly content in his isolation. Then he gets an unexpected visit from his estranged half-sister, Olivia.
Olivia is in her twenties, she’s addicted to heroin, and she needs Lorenzo’s help. Against his better judgment, Lorenzo lets her stay. Over the next week, they form an intense bond. This brief encounter will change the course of both of their lives.
From the acclaimed author of I’m Not Scared, this is a compulsive exploration of what families keep behind locked doors.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Already a bestseller in Italy, Ammaniti's slim but immensely engaging fourth novel presents Lorenzo Cuni, a precocious 14-year-old desperate for some space of his own. He achieves this respite from reality with "Operation Bunker," an elaborate ruse whereby his parents believe he is skiing in the Italian Alps, when actually he has secluded himself in the basement of the family's apartment building. Settling in among dust, sheets, and other items of a "Fifties household amassed in a cellar," Lorenzo surveys the food and video games he's stockpiled and hunkers down for a glorious week of self-induced solitary confinement. Lorenzo describes his childhood as a friendless existence, much befitting the diminutive outcast that he's become, and as narrative sympathy swells, Ammaniti expertly ratchets up the suspense with a rare appearance by half-sister Olivia, 23. Feigning homelessness and a mysterious illness, she joins him in an emotional reunion that soon morphs into a bittersweet, heartbreaking alliance. Both tender and emotionally arresting, Ammaniti's novel is unforgettable.
