Lost Words
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- £6.49
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
Winner of the Viareggio Prize, a vivid portrait of Italy on the brink of social upheaval in the 1970s.
Inside an apartment building on the outskirts of Milan, the working-class residents gossip, quarrel, and conspire against each other. Viewed through the eyes of Chino, an impressionable thirteen-year-old boy whose mother is the doorwoman of the building, the world contained within these walls is tiny, hypocritical, and mean-spirited: a constant struggle. Chino finds escape in reading.One day, a new resident, Amelia Lynd, moves in and quickly becomes an unlikely companion and a formative influence on Chino. Ms. Lynd—an elderly, erudite British woman—comes to nurture his taste in literature, introduces him to the life of the mind, and offers a counterpoint to the only version of reality that he’s known. On one level, Lost Words is an engrossing coming-of-age tale set in the seventies, when Italy was going through tumultuous social changes, and on another, it is a powerful meditation on language, literature, and culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's the 1970s, and 13-year-old Chino spends his free time observing his mother, Elvira, who works as the doorwoman at an apartment building on the fringes of Milan, fielding requests and complaints from the elderly and fickle residents, and cleaning their messes. The pair, along with Chino's cinema-obsessed father, reside in the building's small servants' lodge, and Elvira dreams of one day buying a home to escape the henpecking and chaos of her work life. When a new resident, Amelia Lynd, moves to the building, Chino's attentions shift. He visits the older woman regularly, and soon Lynd reveals an abandoned project, an English/Italian dictionary, to the boy. Their meetings become English lessons, which Chino quickly learns. But their friendship cannot prevent tragedy from striking. As the boy and his mother weather loss Elvira's hope to buy a place of her own is dashed by her husband Lynd's son, Ippolito, arrives and lifts their spirits. Gardini crafts a shaggy novel, with amusing tangents that complement his loose narrative. An entertaining, if occasionally meandering, read.
