The House on Via Gemito
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024
"Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour, conjuring the illusion of three dimensions from a blank flat surface." —Jhumpa Lahiri
"One of Italy's most accomplished novelists." —The Guardian
"Masterly." —Times Literary Supplement
The modest apartment on Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night.
Federì, a railway clerk, is convinced that, if he didn't have a family to feed, he'd be a world-famous painter. Talented, ambitious, and frustrated, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt.
Years later, his first-born son will tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble.
Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and first published in Italy over 20 years ago, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.
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.
