As an English teacher (yep I just appealed to ethos by establishing my cred as a literary critic), I get nervous reviewing a book. Rather, I am awful at discussing books with other English teachers. I read what I like and the reasoning for that is not because I need to be progressive, alternative or edgy. I am reading a book that reels me in in some way or another: It may be the plot that is impossible to understand; it may be the cliched romance between two characters to allow me to escape my often confusing love life (more on that later… or never); it may be that I love the challenge of unravelling a syntactically convoluted sentence.
I discovered an Italian author I like. His name is Erri de Luca and he does wonderful things with my favourite element of the Italian language and culture: Its dialects. Hailing from Naples, he etches narratives onto the page that capture the rustic beauty, entrenched historical poverty and raw Napoletano language.
“Montedidio” is ….. dudes…. to be continued. I need a break.
