The Eight Mountains
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
*The book that inspired the film The Eight Mountains*
For fans of Elena Ferrante and Paulo Coelho comes a moving and elegant novel about the friendship between two young Italian boys from different backgrounds and how their connection evolves and challenges them throughout their lives.
“Few books have so accurately described the way stony heights can define one's sense of joy and rightness...an exquisite unfolding of the deep way humans may love one another” (Annie Proulx).
Pietro is a lonely boy living in Milan. With his parents becoming more distant each day, the only thing the family shares is their love for the mountains that surround Italy.
While on vacation at the foot of the Aosta Valley, Pietro meets Bruno, an adventurous, spirited local boy. Together they spend many summers exploring the mountains’ meadows and peaks and discover the similarities and differences in their lives, their backgrounds, and their futures. The two boys come to find the true meaning of friendship and camaraderie, even as their divergent paths in life—Bruno’s in the mountains, Pietro’s across the world—test the strength and meaning of their connection.
“A slim novel of startling expansion that subtly echoes its setting” (Vogue), The Eight Mountains is a lyrical coming-of-age story about the power of male friendships and the enduring bond between fathers and sons. “There are no more universal themes than those of the landscape, friendship, and becoming adults, and Cognetti’s writing becomes classical (and elegant) to best tell this story…a true novel by a great writer” (Rolling Stone Italia).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Written with the reflection and sensitivity of a memoir, Cognetti's meditative debut explores the intertwined lives of two young men from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Pietro Guasti is 11 years old and contending with his chemist father's demanding mountain-climbing regimen when he befriends Bruno Guglielmina, a cow herder his age living in the shadow of Italy's Monte Rosa. Though the two become close confidants, Pietro, who has worldly ambitions, believes that the more parochial and rugged Bruno would have made a "more suitable" son for his father. When a tragic incident that shaped Pietro's father comes to light, Pietro senses further that he and Bruno "were actually living inside my father's dream." Cognetti takes his novel's title from a Nepalese legend about the different varieties of human experience, and the story illustrates how Pietro and Bruno, despite the dissimilar paths their lives take, can be understood as different sides of the same soul. His nuanced depiction of his two main characters and the camaraderie they share gives his spiritually uplifting tale gravity and texture.
