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• I guess what intrigued me the most when I started reading **L'A** was the narrator's extremely rational voice. From the beginning to the last page, he sustains a cautious, almost scientific distance from the facts he narrates, as a scientist observing and analyzing even his own actions and feelings. That seemed a little odd given the tension involved in the family events he describes. I thought that sense of strangeness could result from my limited familiarity with Italian, but later in the book it became clear this very circumspect, quiet almost to the point of being indifferent voice was an essential part of the story. Later, after finishing it, I learned that this is the style Bajani deploys in other of his books. When Emmanuel Carrère praises **L'A**, he comments that Bajani tackles the difficult subject matter of a son severing ties with his parents in a **scandalously calm** book ("Ci si può liberare dai propri genitori? Dal male che ci hanno fatto? Senza ritorno e senza appello? È una domanda scandalosa. Andrea Bajani la affronta da scrittore, in un libro scandalosamente calmo.") In **L'A**, the narrator examines his own condition with the coldness of a doctor in a brain surgery. It is interesting that the narrator ends the book by saying that **precision** is maybe a more important (and so to speak more virtuous) way to express violence than **destruction**. In a way, he is admitting that he himself is expressing violence, because by Chapter 4 he mentions that a cold hand with slow and **precise** surgical movements is required to separate the words of his subservient mother from those of his oppressive father. A grammatical surgery. As I let Bajani's novel settles down, it came to my mind that this precision and cold-hand resembles Kafka's understated, bureaucratic and elliptical voice. I believe there is even a subconscious connection between **L'A** and **A Letter to his Father** as both deal with authoritarian fathers. By the third act, which involves the narrator's experiences with his therapist, this oddly quiet voice started to sound not only distant but also indifferent and remorseless, almost cruel. Indeed, something really clicked in my mind after the narrator had a conversation with his parents over the phone and the therapist, who was observing him, confesses she was shocked by his vain and frivolous voice. That was the moment when I definitely thought this may well be a completely unreliable narrator who is not aware of his own biases and, most importantly, is not aware of how his own perception of the reality and his family affects the way he reacts to them. Or maybe that is the whole purpose. One of the opening quotes of the novel says : "a wound to the heart is also a wound to the mind," as Louise Glück says in **The Untrustworthy Speaker**. There is a lot in the third act that is suggested through brief comments of the few people who interacts with the narrator in Torino : the lady at the pastry shop where he has breakfast everyday knows he is in pain and recommends the therapist for him; the Calabrese pizzeria owner assumed he was an orphan because he never spoke about his parents; the therapist is shocked with his coldness. These are acquaintances that he likes to consider his "commercial family," people who are paid to be nice with him. And even more is revealed (at least to me) when the narrator **does not** speak of the people who is around him : his first wife, who does not have any role other than be uncomfortable with his parents, and his second wife, who is described only as "la mamma di mio figlio"). Part is due to the restrictions of the narrative (no names are mentioned) but there is a lack of affection that was a little disturbing, especially in the last pages, when the narrator's parents are, as anyone could expect, older and more fragile. At the very end, I could not stop thinking about the narrator as someone who has good reasons to detach from the causes of his pain, but in the process becomes a really tragic figure. I thought of Mersault in Camus' **L'Etranger**, whose social detachment is reflected in his indifference about his mother's death. All of sudden I was even revising the way I've been treating my own parents. Bajani creates a character who feels so suffocated by his oppressive father and so revolted with his mother's extreme submission and silence, that he concludes his only option to remain mentally sane is to sever all contact with them. He celebrates the years he's been delivered from that toxic relationship. That is the anniversary he celebrates, the years that he has passed without them. But, is there really anything to celebrate? In family conflicts, as Aaron Altman says in **Broadcast News** in a totally unrelated (but equally emotionally tense) situation, "does anyone win one of these things"? Bajani's last pages of the novel suggest a kind of "lesser-of-two-evils" response--but you should read them yourself to decide.

• Libro devastante, se siete donna e vi riconoscete nella protagonista

• Un livre sombre (très) sur les sentiments d'un fils vis à vis du couple de ses parents: un père-mari tyran, qu'on appellerait aujourd'hui "toxique" et une mère-épouse effacée au point d'en oublier ses sentiments maternels. Sans doute intéressant, mais vraiment dépriment.

• Sono totalmente d'accordo con la mia insegnante di italiano : é a dire poco , un romanzo intrigante , scritto in un modo fuori del comune . Dunque , altamente raccomandato !!

• Un racconto che a volte fa molto male quando ci si mette nei panni del protagonista. Un grido silenzioso dall’inizio alla fine. Scritto come se fosse una confessione, un ricordo di un figlio vittima della violenza domestica insieme a sua madre di un padre carnefice più psichico che fisico della sua famiglia. Un’atmosfera cupa, pochissimi dialoghi, una lingua a volte laconica a volte precisa ed elaborata.

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