“A reckoning is certainly what awaits Daniele Mallarico, the aging illustrator at the center of Domenico Starnone’s superb Italian novel, “Trick, ” now available in an English translation by Jhumpa Lahiri. In this layered, alternately witty and melancholy story, Mallarico sees shadowy apparitions everywhere when he returns to his childhood home in Naples. And though they do not speak (these are not ghosts that rattle chains), they nudge him to assess his life and explore his insecurities. [...] [Mallarico is] struggling to [...] illustrate a deluxe edition of the classic Henry James short story ‘The Jolly Corner.’ [...] Starnone expertly plucks some of the short story’s essence, twisting and molding his own work into a marvel of metafiction that feels fresh and surprising.”
Read the full review at The Washington Post online.
