Review #25
Holy cow, this is an amazing book. It's New Fabulist, anti-capitalist/consumerist, witty and youthful, contemporary and terrifying. It's eerie and charing and hilarious. Margherita is a teenager in semi-suburban Italy, content with her slightly oddball normal family, until the del Bene family moves into a newly built sleek black cube next door. Soon everyone is dissatisfied with their lot and seduced by the glamorous del Bene's, and only Margherita is left to protest on behalf of magic, dirt, and authenticity. Things get weirder and weirder so you think you're expecting anything, but the ending is still a shock. And it's one of Europa Editions' beautiful trade paperback originals, a lovely thing to hold and laugh over and ponder and cherish. I was sent a comp copy by a friend at Europa who is crazy about it and proselytizing incessantly, and I'm grateful to him. I'm amazed at the wittiness of the translation from the Italian, but not surprised -- these guys do good work. This is one to read -- it's that whole serious-literature-that's-actually-fun genre that I love. Do yourself a favor and find it, buy it, read it, and tell me what you think.