★ 2023-03-14
A son comes to terms with his narcissistic father.
To Starnone’s English-language readers, his new novel might seem to signal a departure: Expansive and winding where his previous books (Trust, 2021, etc.) were spare and straightforward, Starnone’s latest to be translated into English was in fact published in Italy years ago, where it won a prestigious award and helped cement the author's illustrious reputation. In it, the eldest son of a narcissistic, bitter, grossly exaggerating man—a complicated character, to say the least—describes his father’s life. He does so by recounting the stories his father, Federí, told over and over again, with details that shifted with each telling, always in Federí’s favor. Though he worked for the railroads his whole adult life, Federí considered himself an artist—an untrained but brilliant artist, misunderstood, of course, and vastly underappreciated. He spent his days raging against the innumerable injustices he believed himself to endure. Federí’s son has grown up hearing the same complaints so many times he’s no longer sure what is real and what is merely an exaggeration: “The angrier he grew when telling the stories of his life and the reasons for his actions,” our narrator explains, “the thicker the fog grew inside my head.” Starnone writes with the same intricate sympathy for his characters as he has in other books: Every character, including Federí, is a full-fledged human being filled with desire, regret, resentment, bitterness, and hope. At the same time, the Neapolitan setting comes equally alive. Federí married his wife, Rusinè, in the midst of the Second World War, and the confused aftermath of that war, as Italy struggled to regain standing, is beautifully described. Starnone, it seems, can do no wrong.
A complexly structured masterpiece that doubles back on itself in order to move forward.
Starnone...succeeds beautifully in exploiting Federì’s self-contradictions and the unreliability of memory to create what is both a complex family narrative and a masterpiece on the elusive nature of truth.”—Christopher Sorrentino, The New York Times
“Starnone is a writer exquisitely attuned to class anxieties: As his later novels do, Via Gemito explores the emotional cost of class mobility, and the psychic toll of changing one’s speech patterns and behavior for the sake of social and financial gain...In Starnone’s novels, releasing yourself from whatever bitterness consumed your parents is an ultimately futile pursuit.”—Idra Novey, The Atlantic
“A vivid, fluid, richly detailed drama, tormented and hilarious.”—Tim Parks, The Washington Post
“[The House on Via Gemito] presents a vivid rainbow of sediments: a boy’s initiations, with every antenna trembling, tuning in secrets of both family and neighborhood; and an evisceration of the creative life, exposing both how the world crushes its artists and how artists sabotage their own efforts; and all this erupts like Naples in full cry.”—John Domini, The Brooklyn Rail
“The House On Via Gemito is an exuberant portrait of the writer as a young (and then middle-aged) man, and an allegory of the role of the artist, adrift in the Sargasso of modernity.”—Hamilton Cain, On the Seawall
“The House on Via Gemito serves to show his English readership how much broader his talent is. A memento mori of sorts, the book is a reminder that most of us will only be remembered by how we treated those near to us.”—William Braun, Rain Taxi Review of Books
“Oonagh Stransky has done a good job: this version, for the excellent Europa Editions, is readable and elegant, and deals well with the difficulties of the Neapolitan dialect. Domenico Starnone has remarked that 'it is so rare, in this mud puddle that is Italy, to have international reach.' Thankfully, this is changing. Twenty-three years is a long time to wait for a book this good, but here it is at last.”—Clare Pettit, Times Literary Supplement
★ “Every character...is a full-fledged human being filled with desire, regret, resentment, bitterness, and hope. At the same time, the Neapolitan setting comes equally alive...Starnone, it seems, can do no wrong. A complexly structured masterpiece.”—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“Domenico Starnone’s most important book.... robust, flawlessly structured and luminously written.”—L’Indice
“A cross-section of Neapolitan life, and a life-story expertly told.”—Benevento
“A masterpiece.”—Reading in Translation
“This contemporary masterpiece was certainly worth the wait.”—Evening Standard
Praise for Domenico Starnone
“A short, sharp novel that cuts like a scalpel to the core of its characters... Starnone has earned a reader’s trust with another agile analysis of frail humanity.”—Los Angeles Times on Trust
“An Italian master gives it a suspenseful twist in this vibrant novel that’s equal parts Endless Love, la dolce vita, and unreliable narration….A rip of a read.”—Oprah Daily on Trust
“Indirection like that, stirring up terrific curiosity, proves one of the novel’s best gambits…I’d call it the best of Lahiri’s Starnone essays—a fine fit for the best of his recent creative surge.”—Washington Post on Trust
“Electrifying.”—Financial Times on Trick
“Ties is...the leanest, most understated and emotionally powerful novel by Domenico Starnone.”—Rachel Donadio, The New York Times
“Ties is puzzle-like, architectural, a novel ingeniously constructed.”—The New Yorker
