The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Italian author Francesco Pacifico's The Story of my Purity.
This came out in English a few months ago and was pretty much DOA in the US/UK; The Guardian seems to be the only major media outlet that bothered with it. It passed pretty much under my radar too; I didn't get a copy when it came out, and didn't seek one out; one now finally came my way in my capacity as Best Translated Book Award judge (leading to my dutifully reading it -- we're willing to consider absolutely every eligible title published over the course of the year, after all).
Brought out (in the US) by a publisher with the reputation and clout of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, it's a bit surprising it died the quick, silent death it did -- but I have to figure the marketing was a major problem here. As Tibor Fischer complained in his review:
The problem is that this is not a comic book (and I don't think it is meant to be) -- indeed, it's not particularly funny at all, in either the laugh-out-loud or chuckle-to-yourself sense. It's very much in the Houellebecqian mode, but without quite Houellebecq's deadpan humor. Yes there's a bit of absurd stuff that has a humorous side to it, but, no, this is not a comic novel -- and anyone reading it as such would be bitterly disappointed. Would-be reviewers apparently quickly tossed it aside when it couldn't live up to its ridiculous billing, and readers probably didn't give it much of a chance either.
I'm not sure it deserves too much attention -- but it certainly desrerves more (and a different kind) than it received.
This came out in English a few months ago and was pretty much DOA in the US/UK; The Guardian seems to be the only major media outlet that bothered with it. It passed pretty much under my radar too; I didn't get a copy when it came out, and didn't seek one out; one now finally came my way in my capacity as Best Translated Book Award judge (leading to my dutifully reading it -- we're willing to consider absolutely every eligible title published over the course of the year, after all).
Brought out (in the US) by a publisher with the reputation and clout of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, it's a bit surprising it died the quick, silent death it did -- but I have to figure the marketing was a major problem here. As Tibor Fischer complained in his review:
the heap of endorsements collected here was a bracing reminder of how such effusions bear no actual relation to the book. When Gary Shteyngart writes "the novel fell on my head like a bowling ball and knocked me the hell out", I sincerely hope he is giving us an account of a book falling from a high shelf and causing concussion.The back-cover blurbs are also presented on the FSG publicity page, and it's worth noting how much emphasis there is on the book's supposed humor: Dana Spiotta (whose work Pacifico has translated into Italian ...) claims: "Francesco Pacifico is a brilliantly funny and weirdly subversive writer", Gary Shteyngart says this novel is: "Insanely funny and terrifically offensive", and Marco Roth calls it "viscerally honest and hilarious".
The problem is that this is not a comic book (and I don't think it is meant to be) -- indeed, it's not particularly funny at all, in either the laugh-out-loud or chuckle-to-yourself sense. It's very much in the Houellebecqian mode, but without quite Houellebecq's deadpan humor. Yes there's a bit of absurd stuff that has a humorous side to it, but, no, this is not a comic novel -- and anyone reading it as such would be bitterly disappointed. Would-be reviewers apparently quickly tossed it aside when it couldn't live up to its ridiculous billing, and readers probably didn't give it much of a chance either.
I'm not sure it deserves too much attention -- but it certainly desrerves more (and a different kind) than it received.