The Solitude of Prime Numbers
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Review
The year's most important debut --La Repubblica
Genius...everybody can find in Giordano's book a small piece of himself --Il Giornale
Moving...masterful...elegantly discreet --Times Literary Supplement
An elegant fable...its recurring themes of loneliness and longing shimmer through trim and supple prose --Prospect Magazine
The story is mesmerising --Good Housekeeping
A very accomplished book...A melancholic, but strangely beautiful, read. Shaun Whiteside's translation is exemplary and the acute descriptions of teenage competitiveness, angst and aspiration bring to mind Alan Warner's writing. --Guardian
In clear, heartbreakingly precise prose, the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Premio Strega (the Italian Man Booker) explores how trauma and guilt can capsize emotional stability and leave the vulnerable in a wash of unease and loss...a stunning achievement --Daily Mail
Genius...everybody can find in Giordano's book a small piece of himself --Il Giornale
Moving...masterful...elegantly discreet --Times Literary Supplement
An elegant fable...its recurring themes of loneliness and longing shimmer through trim and supple prose --Prospect Magazine
The story is mesmerising --Good Housekeeping
A very accomplished book...A melancholic, but strangely beautiful, read. Shaun Whiteside's translation is exemplary and the acute descriptions of teenage competitiveness, angst and aspiration bring to mind Alan Warner's writing. --Guardian
In clear, heartbreakingly precise prose, the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Premio Strega (the Italian Man Booker) explores how trauma and guilt can capsize emotional stability and leave the vulnerable in a wash of unease and loss...a stunning achievement --Daily Mail
Review
Very accomplished...melancholic, but strangely beautiful...The acute descriptions of teenage competitiveness, angst and aspiration bring to mind Alan Warner's writing.
--This text refers to the
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Prime numbers just are. They cannot be broken down and don't belong to the cosy families of multiples or the exotic splendor of square numbers. They stand alone. Giordano points out in this novel that prime numbers frequently exist close to each other- alongside though never having any real relationship to each other except for their non-conformity and difference to every other number.
This novel describes two characters who are like prime numbers. They are frozen in time partly due to terrible things that have happened them and partly due to their own unique nature. Alice sustained a terrible fracture of her leg and since then has limped in a solitary fashion. Mattia lost his younger sister when he left her alone in the park rather than bring her to a birthday party where he would be teased about her learning difficulties and her behavioural problems. Their adolescence is even more painful than most due to the jagged raw scars that stretch back to the days their lives were changed forever. Yet in their difference they were drawn to each other and draw others that were equally hurt or different for other reasons to their side. This story simply follows the tortured path of how they developed into adults.
This book is short. It can be easily read in a couple of nights. Yet it is magnificently profound and will remain with you for a long time. It is mature, sensitive and the prose is succinct and easy to read despite the fact that it has clearly been translated with all the difficulties that translation can entail. The aftertaste from the novel may not be immediately satisfying but it is memorable and will cause you to ponder.
This novel describes two characters who are like prime numbers. They are frozen in time partly due to terrible things that have happened them and partly due to their own unique nature. Alice sustained a terrible fracture of her leg and since then has limped in a solitary fashion. Mattia lost his younger sister when he left her alone in the park rather than bring her to a birthday party where he would be teased about her learning difficulties and her behavioural problems. Their adolescence is even more painful than most due to the jagged raw scars that stretch back to the days their lives were changed forever. Yet in their difference they were drawn to each other and draw others that were equally hurt or different for other reasons to their side. This story simply follows the tortured path of how they developed into adults.
This book is short. It can be easily read in a couple of nights. Yet it is magnificently profound and will remain with you for a long time. It is mature, sensitive and the prose is succinct and easy to read despite the fact that it has clearly been translated with all the difficulties that translation can entail. The aftertaste from the novel may not be immediately satisfying but it is memorable and will cause you to ponder.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a very accomplished book and deserves all its success. It is a coming-of-age novel about two lonely children who had traumatic incidents in their childhoods. Alice had a skiing accident, broke her leg and is forever labelled a cripple because of her limp. Mattia, meanwhile, abandoned his twin sister in a park; because she was mentally retarded, he found her an embarrassing encumbrance. She was never seen again. Giordano traces the next 24 years of their lives: their dislocation from society, their discomfort with their overbearing or overly solicitous parents, their distance from their schoolfriends and even from each other. The title comes from Mattia's notion (he's a maths buff) that Alice and he are "twin primes", like 11 and 13, or 17 and 19, lonely individuals that are forever linked but forever separated.
Part of the interest of the book comes from its minimalism. Scenes, dialogue and descriptions are brief, almost terse. It would have been easy to fall into melodrama and produce a happy resolution, but Giordano remains as icy as his characters, offering only misunderstandings and missed opportunities until the bitter end.
I had the fortune to be able to read the book in the original language and appreaciate all the strengh of the words. The description of everyday scenes and the feelings portrait make for a sad, but strangely beautiful, read. Very poignant
Part of the interest of the book comes from its minimalism. Scenes, dialogue and descriptions are brief, almost terse. It would have been easy to fall into melodrama and produce a happy resolution, but Giordano remains as icy as his characters, offering only misunderstandings and missed opportunities until the bitter end.
I had the fortune to be able to read the book in the original language and appreaciate all the strengh of the words. The description of everyday scenes and the feelings portrait make for a sad, but strangely beautiful, read. Very poignant
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I read this book over a couple of afternoons so it is quite a quick and easy read. At times I enjoyed the book, although the overall feeling I had was one of disappointment. The characters were not particularly endearing and I found it slightly unbelievable that all of the characters in the book had such terrible lives. I would have liked the author to expand on the Michaela storyline at the time she disappeared. I did think that the idea of Mattia and Alice being like prime numbers was quite clever. Not sure if I would read anything by the same author again.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Unconvincing and disappointing
Impressed by the positive reviews I decided to buy the book and then I read it over a few weeks, but it was quite a disappointment. Read more
Published 10 months ago by M.I.
Separation and Disconnecton as a Natural Mode of Living?
This novel starts and ends with prime numbers, beginning with Chapter 1 and ending with Chapter 47. Mattia, a mathematician, considers himself to be a prime number in the (prime)... Read more
Published 12 months ago by G. Charles Steiner
`A prime number is a lonely thing.'
This story, which covers the years from 1983 to 2007, is about two lonely children with traumatic incidents in their past who grow into lonely, but linked adulthood. Read more
Published 14 months ago by J. Cameron-Smith
That's 5 hours I'm not going to get back!
Loving everything Italian I was extremely disappointed and quite angry by the time I got to the last page. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mazzerati
a perfect title
The title truly sums up the whole - prime numbers are often close but can never be next to each other and therefore cannot have a true relationship. Read more
Published 19 months ago by J. A. West
Simply stunning
This is a stunning book on so many levels; the prose is beautiful, the characterisation is sensitive and the story itself is painful and unsettling. Read more
Published 21 months ago by T. A. Sainsbury
Lives running on parallel lines
This is an engaging and sensitively written book exploring two lives from childhood to maturity, which are fractured by extreme dysfunction. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Lady Fancifull
Melancholy
The characters of Mattia and Alice are very well-drawn. Mattia is a brilliant mathemetician but has quite a bit of trouble dealing with people, and although it is never stated it... Read more
Published on 28 April 2010 by Pen pal
The beauty of Giordano's style does shine through, but not enough
Maybe I've read so many good things about this book, combined with it winning the Premio Strega award, making Giordano the youngest winner ever of this Italian literary award, that... Read more
Published on 13 April 2010 by irisonbooks
A romance of parallel lines
This is a very enjoyable and well written first novel, though it's very downbeat in places. A tale of two damaged children and how they grow up, linked only by their solitude and... Read more
Published on 1 April 2010 by Archy
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